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ECHOES 



FROM 



CENTRAL MUSIC HALL 



SELECTIONS FROM THE RECENT SERMONS 



OF 



PROFESSOR DAVID SWING 



Including the Celebrated Sermon on "Capital and 

Labor," the Last Preached by 

Professor Swing, 

COMPILED BY 

THOMAS W.,HANDFORD, iT'^^-J 

Pastor of the Church of the Multitude. 



DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., 

407-425 Dearborn St. 
CHICAGO. 









Copyright 1894, by 
DONOHUE. HENNEBERRY & CO. 



DEDICATION 



PEARIv AND GRACIK AND BKLLK. 

THREE MAIDENS IN THE MORNING OF THEIR YEARS— 

'• Standing with reluctant feet, 
Where the brook and river meet, 
Womanhood and childhood fleet ! 
Gazing with a timid glance. 
On the brooklet's swift advance, 
On the river's broad expanse ! " 

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 



**To you, young men and young maidens, the divine 
philosophy of life comes like the song of the morning lark. 
A philosophy that asks only for a neat home, vines of one's 
own planting, a few books full of the inspiration of genius, a 
few friends worthy of being loved and able to love in 
return, a devotion for right that will never swerve, and a 
simple religion full of faith and love. This morning hymn 
sung by the world is for you. You should grasp this life 
while the inspiration of youth is pouring like a torrent 
through your hearts, and remember that out of humble life 
the mightiest souls have come, and on the threshold of a 
cottage the holiest sunlight has alwavs fallen." — David 
Swing. 




CENTRAL MUSIC HALL, STATE AlSD RAlNDOLPH STS., CHICAGO. 



THE LAST WORDS 



OF 



PROFESSOR DAVID SWING. 



Up to the last Professor Swing was busy with the grand 
work of his life. Contemplating the service of the approach- 
ing Sabbath he partly prepared a sermon he did not live to 
preach. The last words of the unfinished sermon ran 
thus : 

'' iWit must all i^ope muci^ from X^t (gratiual 
^rogresis of 13rott)erlg Uobe.'' 

The pen was then laid down forever. No words could 
have been more appropriate. They strike the key-note of 
the Professor's ministry. 



PREFATORY TRIBUTE. 



The world is poorer to-day by the departure from its 
busy scenes of Professor David Swing. Chicago^ and the 
7iationy and the age, have alike suffered irreparable loss. 
Men like David Swing vtake the world a good place to live 
in. They create an atmosphere that is pure and healthful 
and invigorating; and as the young man said of his sainted 
wife whose life Jiadbeeii as a light of heaven upon his path, 
^^It will be harder to be good now thai she has gonef so 
thousands who have been cheered and inspired by the 7iow 
silent p?'eacher, will sorely miss the helpful influeyice of his 
words, and the might of his gejitle personality. He was 
one of God s ''^Apostle lights,''^ whose 7'adiance death has 
neither quenched or eclipsed, but only removed to shine more 
clearly under serener skies. David Swing, like the Fore- 
runner of the great Teacher, was a bjirning and shining 
light, and mayiy thousands have rejoiced in the truth he 
taught. While we m^ourn the death of such a man. Ictus be 
very grateful that he was so much to his friends, his church 
andhis age, for so long a time. Of his sixty four years, 
nearly half a century was engaged in public service. The 
life of David Swing was largely free from mere evefits. 
Too much has bee7t made, and we fear more will be 7nade 
of what was after all only aii episode hi his peaceful gentle 
career. That the custodians of oi^tho doxy felt called upon 
to disturb the even tenor of his way is by no 7neans re7nark- 
able. When James I. of England said he would make the 
Puritans confor7n to the teachings and modes of the estab- 
lished church or he would '^ harry the7n out of the la7id^^^ 



PREFATORY TRIBUTE. 9 

he was only representing the genius of orthodox jealousy 
which is generally as blind as it is narrow. James did 
^^ harry ^ the Puritans out of the la?id, and drove them 
across the sea to find in this cotmtry a shrine for liberty^ 

and 

^^ Freedom to worship God.''' 

Professor Swing was practically ''harried'^ out of the 
church; hut the trial for heresy., gave Chicago and the age 
one of its grayidest spiritual forces^ untrammeled, and free 
''as is a bird of air, an orb of heaven^ This was, how- 
ever, but a passing episode in a career that has been like 
a glorious river, bearing perpetual smishine on its bosom, 
while its deep under currents run steadily on to the eternal 
sea of truth. In the grand sum of the life just ended the 
trial episode formes no important part. It m,ight just as well 
be forgotten. Maiiy who shared i7i it may well wish it had 
never been. The broad and generous charity; the large, 
hopeful, all-endiiring love; that formed the theme of David 
Siving' s ministry became incarnate in his life. Beautiful 
and pathetic, eloquent and inspiring as his sermo7is were, 
he was the grandest sermon of all. And he, though dead, 
will be eloquent for tnany a day. Thousands whose hands 
he 7iever grasped, whose faces he never knew, will feel sad 
to the center of their hearts that death has borne away so 
wise a teacher, so gentle a friend. He has served his day 
and generation and has 'fallen on sleep,'' as did that other 
David of the kingly race. His sun went down at eventide, 
it went not down in darkness and in storm, but melted in 
the pure light of heaven. We need not trouble about the 
future. Prof. Swing will have no successor. Such men 
cannot be succeded. Beecher arid Spurgeon and Swing 
have done their work. A church 7nay still fioutish at the 
Tabernacle in London, at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn^ or 



lO PREFATORY TRIBUTE. 

at the Central Music Hall. Bid the men are few and far 
between^ who could gracefully wear the maiitle of these as- 
cended saints. Other nie^i and other methods will be able 
to do grand work in the old places. To follow in a proces- 
sion is one thing, but to succeed a great man is quite an- 
other. There have been 7nany poets, only one Milton ; 
many preachers, 07ily one Swing. But he has gone from 
us, and yet we cannot think that that busy brain has ceased 
to act, or that that large heart has ceased to love. Miltofi 
is not dead! Hampden is not dead! Washington and 
Lincoln are not dead, nor is David Swing ! He has en- 
tered the silent land, and we stand by that gate of death 
that leads to life — silent and solitary and sad I 

Church of the Multitude, 
December 12th, 1894. 



SELECTIONS 



PROM THE 

SERMONS OF PROF. DAVID SWING. 



Christ the Center and Circumference. 

The most powertul Christianity for the near future will 
be that one which shall make the person of Christ the 
center and circumference of its truth and emotions. 
All which prefigured or gently and slowly led 
toward that Nazarine perfection should be thought to 
have performed its mission when the Christ came, and 
should be discharged as a pilot is paid off and discharged 
when he has brought the great ship to its anchorage 
and home. This the high orthodox refuse to do. Having 
informed us that Moses was a school-master in the in- 
fancy of religion, they retain him, rod in hand, after 
Christ has turned infancy into manhood, and they send 
the world in its old age to the same master as though to 
study again the alphabet of salvation. The success of 
public lecturers in raising a laugh any day and hour over 
the dogmas of the Church, warn us that we who preach 
Christ must draw nearer that one theme, and must per- 
mit the modern mind to enjoy a wonderful liberty in 
making up its estimate of all those parts of the Bible 
and of creeds which do not involve the historic reality of 
Jesus as the adequate Saviour of all who imitate his 
virtues. 



12 ECHOES 

Worship Enchains Man to His Maker. 

It is a custom of logic to reason from the lower to the 
higher, but it is often fitting to argue downward from 
the higher postulate. From the worship of God pass 
down then that admiration of beauty which so fills our 
age. As worship enchains man to his Maker and detains 
him until he is enobled by so great an association, so all 
this lower admiration of beautiful things flings back 
some rich coloring upon the admiring mind. It would 
be a blessed hope for our youth if they could always 
have open to them some beautiful gateway. No school- 
house will ever open like the school of the sentiments. 
The worshiper becomes like his God. 

What Touches One Touches All. 

What touches one educated heart touches all hearts. 
There is for all our race one pathos, one laughter, one 
beauty. As the name of each flower of earth moves all 
hearts, and as each page of literature moves all thinking 
minds, whether that page was composed in Athens or in 
Italy, or by Schiller or Lamartine or Cervantes, so the 
name of each nation touches the soul, because he who is a 
good citizen of one land is the child of all countries. To 
fill the earth with such Christian citizens will be the final 
task and triumph of religion. 

Christian Means Christ. 

Under earnest intellectual action the word Christian 
will at last imply a human character like that of Christ. 
lyater in the history of our race the words. Protestantism 
and Romanism, will disappear, both displaced by the 
power and beauty of a Christian manhood and woman- 
hood. It is a law of our planet that the less shall die 
when the greater shall come. The wild apple, the wild 



DAVID SWING. 13 

orange, are not sweet enough to merit our soil and sun. 
Slavery died when the present century came with its study 
of liberty. 

Christ and Woman. 

The degradation of woman came from her being set 
apart for looking after the stuff. She could not aspire, 
or hope, or think anything, or learn anything, or be any- 
thing. Even so good a son as Telemachus told his 
mother to stay close to her loom. And the kind-hearted 
Xenophon said the greatest duty of woman was to look 
after her husband's food and clothes. At times, the 
Greek woman broke out of that jail and struck her harp 
like a Sappho or taught divine philosophy like an Antig- 
one. It is probable Christ aimed at this domestic bond- 
age of woman when he told Martha that she overrated the 
kitchen; that Mary's idea was better; that woman, like 
man, was the lawful heir of an immense spiritual world 
and should claim it. The kitchen ^should be small, the 
halls of the mind magnificent. One course at the table was 
enough, the other five or six courses should be taken at 
the banquet of philosophy. The Protestants read the 
text and declared the one needful course was Calvinism; 
the Catholics read it and locked Mary up in a convent that 
she might not be disturbed in her thoughts. 

Burns and Dickens. 

What is most wonderful about the young mind is the 
fact that when books and schools are denied it, it can 
meditate and turn the solitude of the farm into a great 
school house. Poverty can deny the blessing of books, 
but poverty cannot always prevent reflection from creat- 
ing a whole library of poetry, romance and philosophy. 
Many minds, like that of Robert Burns and Charles 
Dickens, have made their own power. Their minds 



14 ECHOES 

kept their own school all day long. Even at recess the 
work went on. The school was perennial. There was 
no cross master. There was no tuition bill. Each sum- 
mer the poor lonely boy stood higher. He kept his own 
grade and voted himself the honors. 

Mind Growing Under Culture. 

By as much as the human mind grows under the per- 
petual influence of the school house and the perpetual 
accumulations of the literatures and the sciences 
by so much does it love more the broad places of our 
world. Mind grows under culture. It would be a great 
pity if long summers and rich soil and a thousand j-ears 
should combine to make great oak trees, great cypresses, 
massive woods, and could not combine in some way in 
the construction of great minds and great hearts. The 
world's buildings grow larger, its ships larger, its 
bridges longer. Thus the mind journeys onward, and 
gladly exchanges ponds for oceans and little ideas for 
large ones. Schools, literatures, sciences, arts, and a 
thousand years are beginning to reveal an effect. Much 
that was pleasing once is too small now. Many ideas 
that once gave pleasure have become oppressive, not 
from any falseness, but from their littleness. Paulette's 
flower in her green paper box w^as not false. It was 
simply too much limited by the paper. It needed scope 
for root and branch and vine. 

Thought Brings Change. 

Great changes must come into man's intellectual 
world after thought has been playing upon it for a few 
hundred years. There must be new adjustments of sub- 
ject and object, name and thought. It would be very 
singular to us should some great despot come here and 



DAVID SWING. 15 

set Up an absolute throne in the night, and in the morn- 
ing we should wake to find the castes of India around 
us, and that we dare not speak to the man we liked yes- 
terday, and dare not touch the hand of our old friend. 
The wife must not eat with her husband, nor the son 
with the mother. The soldier must not associate with 
the farmer. Thus India has thirty-six shapes of human- 
ity, going from the Brahmin downward. Unable to find 
more than thirty-six names for these human colors they 
call all other people by the name of pariahs. 

Toussant I/'ouverture. 

It often happens that a name comes down to us from 
the past, all covered with honors as though there were 
under it great achievements for man or learning or art. 
Toussant I^'ouverture thus comes to us in moral charm, 
and we scarcely inquire whether he failed or triumphed. 
Upon reviewing the page we find that his schemes failed, 
and that all this splendor shines out of the grand inten- 
tions of his heart. Failure from personal defect, of judg- 
ment, or from some blemish of mind or soul, seems erased 
by the fact that honesty was present even when power 
was wanting. 

Ingredients of a High Manhood. 

A great variety of ingredients is consumed in the manu- 
facture of a high manhood. If it be true that much power 
of mind and heart pass along by heredity, then to create a 
good individual one or two or three centuries must be 
consumed. Each great and noble personage is thus a 
thousand years old. He carries the powers and mental 
charms which were toiled over and practiced by his pro- 
genitors. It is not wholly in bad taste when the Chinese 
worship the emblems of their ancestors, for the heart 



i6 ECHOES 

ought to bow in gratitude to the memory of those who 
shaped well its destiny in advance. Those should be 
loved who did us all great kindness before we came into 
being. They prepared the house and then fitted the 
inmate to the house. 

Man Made Great by Sentiments. 

If one would find the true value of a sincere worship, 
one mUvSt first note the vastness of that spiritual fortune 
that comes through the heart. Literature is composed 
almost wholly of what the heart loves and admires. As the 
painter paints for the sentiments, as the sculptor carves 
for what society loves, as music works wholly for man's 
delight and tears, so literature utters all its eloquence to 
the heart. You would not designate the algebra and the 
law reports as literature. You would not class as letters 
the debates on tariff or silver. At the mention of the 
word "literature," human life in sadness or joy comes 
before us ; Helen of Troy poses in gracefulness ; Andro- 
mache and her child part with Hector ; the plumed 
Achilles hurries along in his chariot ; the woods whisper ; 
the nightingale sings ; Dante and Beatrice appear ; Ham- 
let acts his part ; Ophelia dies ; Paul and Virginia make 
of Mauritius a paradise and a grave; "Little Dorritt" is 
the beautiful dove of a prison ; Fantine sleeps in a hillock 
which soft rain levels and flowers conceal. Literature is 
not learning. It is man's holiest passion. It is the soul 
rushing out of the holy of holies. Man is made great by 
the sentiments. Touch literature anywhere and the 
human face flushes. The strings of that instrument 
called "letters" are fastened to the heart. 

Poor Thoughts Fade. 

All ideas that contain littleness live only a temporary 
life. Men only camp in them — they do not live there. 



DAVID SWING. 17 

They are not home. Poor thoughts fade when some 
new and great beauty is born. Thus the two words, 
"Protestant" and "Catholic," are serving only in an 
interregnum, waiting for the advent of some crowned 
forehead. When the ' ' Christian citizen ' ' shall have 
come into this Nation the lesser worlds will soon perish ; 
for great as "Protestantism" and "Romanism" have 
been, neither name contains any trace of immortality ; 
but to the term ' ' Christian citizen ' ' one may easily 
attach the word * ' forever. ' ' 

What Modern Scientists Have Done. 

The modern scientists have done two deeds at one and 
the same time. They have indeed made the universe 
outgrow the early interpretations of Genesis, but they 
have made it too vast and too amazing not to have come 
from a God. Even the slow development of animals 
and plants, and the newly found wonders of light and 
heat make the demand greater for a mind which could 
arrange so many great means to so many great ends. 
All that enlarges the material kingdom must enlarge its 
cause and make the argument for a Creator greater now 
than it was when the sun was supposed to be drawn by 
horses and affected by summer and winter winds. 

The Sensitive Mind. 

A slow mind and sluggish heart can be aroused by an 
external storm. Blessed that mind and heart which in 
times of peace and of prosperity can still perceive the need 
of mankind and can realize the greatness of the sea of 
human life, even though no storm be on its surface. A 
common mind can realize the greatness of the ocean 
when it is storm-tossed, it is a finer soul that is filled 
with awe also by its stillness and solitude. 



I 8 ECHOES 

The Value of Worsliip- 

The value of worship does not accrue to the Deity, but 
to the worshiper. When the first offerings were ever 
made to a god the mind that brought the gifts was still 
an infant, and thought that its god needed all kinds of 
food and drink and jewels. Even in times later, and 
much grander the temples of Athens and Carthage and 
Rome were full of offerings made to the divinities of each 
land. Garments, armor, jewels were stored away for the 
use or delight of the divinities. A Greek general made 
a vow that if his god would help him win a certain battle 
he would offer to that god as many kids as there were 
enemies left dead upon the field. When Solomon dedi- 
cated his temple he offered to the lyord 22,000 oxen and 
120,000 sheep, it not then being ever imagined that all 
those animals were the Lord's before Solomon had killed 
them ; and that, so far as the Lord was to be thought of, 
the oxen and sheep would please God better when they 
were roaming in peace on the green hills than when they 
were only dead carcasses in the slaughter pen. 

Do Not Ask Too Much. 

Sir William Hamilton and men of that high school 
have declared that the true logic must never ask for 
more causation than is necessary; and such writers as 
Trench have said that a miracle is to be believed only 
when it was performed for some tremendous purpose. 
Modern logic does not exclude the miraculous, but it 
demands, in a religious system, the least possible of the 
superhuman and the most possible of the reasonable or 
natural. To the pulpit of to-day the young man and 
the young woman come in all the new truth and power 
of logic, asking the high Calvinist why the sun stood 



DAVID SWING. - 19 

still for Joshua, or why God ordered bloody wars, or why 
He helped Samson catch the foxes, or pull down a 
temple, and he is unable to make any other reply than 
that "all things are possible with God." This answer 
brings not the silence of peace and conviction, but the 
silence of contempt. The questioner knows well that 
God could make the sun stand still, but doubts whether 
he did so for a transient Joshua. The event must be as 
great as the divine interference. 

Man is God's Guest. 

It is said of some Eastern nation that if a guest admires 
anything in the home of the host, the host must give that 
object to the guest. It would be cruel to send the guest 
home with longing, but empt}^ hands. What is thus told 
in fancy of some unhistoric state may be told in truth of 
man's greater world, for what he worships is instantly 
his. Admiration, worship is possession. Man cries out, 
"I admire the sun and the stars!" Henceforth they are 
his. Nothing can separate them from his heart. He 
admires music. Ever afterward it is in him, of him, and 
for him. They are inseparable. Man is God's guest. 
God gives him what he worships in the infinite house. 
Worship is not for God, it is for man. We are in God's 
home. He says what you love is 3^ours. 

An Age of Worship. 

Perhaps we are coming to an age of worship rather 
than of theology. It is easy to imagine a period in which 
the Old Testament and the New Testament will empty all 
their holy and beautiful things into the public heart. If 
any mind shall not love all the holy books let it take a 
part, as lyinnaeus did not espouse the earth's rocks and 
waters but only its plants. If one cannot admire Paul let 



20 ECHOES 

him read after Saint John. If worship declines at some 
one spot, it will rise on some other page, as we are often 
unmoved by the great ocean but can cry at the voice of a 
song, or sit down in deep joy in the leaf}' woods. One 
thin^ is essential — to find some path in which the foot 
can always advance with reverence; for reverence, wor- 
ship, admiration are the mighty educators of our race. 

The l^xample of Jonah. 

If Jonah was literally swallowed and transported 
around in the ocean for three days in the whale's dark 
bed-chamber fitted up for such a contemptible guest, then 
the lesson ends with Jonah; and if God has you and me 
in mind He will have to issue to us a similar order, and 
prepare for us two more great fishes; but you and I are 
included the moment the story is spiritualized, because 
then the lesson is on the surface that if any adult mortal 
would rather join the crowd in sin than lead it toward 
righteousness, that person ought to be swallowed by any 
kind of marine or earthly monster existing in animated 
nature. 

The Moral Spendthrift. 

Old hand-earned gold is not the only wealth that may 
be dissipated by a subsequent generation. An inherited 
power and morals may also be squandered and an age go 
out of life mentally and spiritually poorer than it came 
in. The child of the highly civilized parent inherits 
great animation and will soon possess a language, 
a taste, a conscience, and a mental activity far beyond 
the reach of the child of the savage. This is the spir- 
itual inheritance which may soon be squandered. The 
child which, at its tenth year, could possess such a large 
fortune, may soon turn tovvard vice or crime and thus 



DAVID SWING. 21 

fling away as a drunkard or criminal a moral excellence 
which had been accumulating for him in many a past 
century. 

Confucius. 

So essential is it that man stand in the presence of 
greatness that the Chinese have extracted not a little of 
virtue and honor from their devotion to only their ances- 
tors. Confucius, who, for twenty-five centuries, has 
molded the lives of many millions, accomplished this 
result chiefly through five forms of reverence — that be- 
tween emperor and ofiicers, between father and son, hus- 
band and wife, brother and brother, friend and friend. 
This reverence, playing upon the hearts that were alive, 
arose still higher after the object of regard had passed 
out of life. If a brother was dear while he was living, 
he is made still more dear by the mystery of death. 
Death transfigures those we love. All faults are for- 
given and forgotten, and all merits are nurtured into 
bloom. How much greater the transfiguration when 
love ran deep before the death. The Chinese, having 
exalted these five relations of heart to heart all through 
the happy days of earth, then at death the emperor, or 
the father, or wife or son, or friend passed up into a 
memory akin to worship. Thus every youth went to 
school to all the goodness of his country. He was sur- 
rounded by five types of mortals who were trying to live 
in such a manner that their bones would be like those of 
a saint. This reverence was an education. 

More "I/ives of Saints'^ than Saints. 

Thoughts will keep from age to age, and cannot 
ever be marked as "perishable goods," but still there 
may be a wrong done society by means of that robbery 



22 ECHOES 

which thinking commits against doing. This calamity 
befell some of the Christian centuries in which almost all 
the religious leaders became writers. There were ten 
men to suggest for one man to perform. It is now gen- 
erally doubted that there were an3'thing near as many 
saints as there were "lives of saints," for the mind had 
cultivated the art of sacred biography, and had reached 
the abilit}^ to make a volume out of a name whose real 
pious exploits were worthy of only a page. The ''lives of 
the saints were more numerous and wonderful than the 
saints ' ' themselves. At least, great works were absent, 
and abundant words were present in all those dark 
centuries. 

Irrelevant Terms. 

If the special names of many of the churches are fail- 
ing and are about to fall away as dead limbs from the oak, 
it must be coming to pass that names are falling away 
from other objects besides the church. The sun cannot 
shine upon the grape and not touch the ripening fig. In 
Illinois the sun cannot shine upon the wheat and not 
touch the corn and grass. The age that finds irrelevant 
terms in the sanctuary will soon find them in the home 
and street. Our land is leading in this work of separa- 
ting manhood and womanhood from all that is irrelevant. 

The Composure of Theology and the Courage 
of Skepticism. 

In some of the costly missals of the old Roman 
church, there are many pictures in life colors showing the 
attitude the priest should assume at certain points and 
crises of the service. It is therein shown how the arms 
should be raised in the celebration of the mass, and how 
the holy robes should be received and be surrendered by the 



DAVID SWING. 23 

celebrant. Thus that age had a volume of positions and 
motions and expressions and reposes, and when down 
upon that childish period swept Voltaire and his laugh- 
ing allies, the church was powerless of rational speech. 
Protestantism was an advance from childhood to man- 
hood, from form to reason, but its dignity to-day is too 

much that of the owl, rather than that of the eagle. 
Theology sits in sublime composure; skepticism soars 
with courage and ambition. 

The Shellfish Element in Man. 

The stupid animals that live in shells — the snail, the 
clam, the oyster — retreat into their houses and fasten 
their pearly gates the instant anything except the soft water 
touches them. Though only a pebble may roll against 
their houses they go into retirement as though there 
were a dreadful enemy about. Man possesses some faint 
traces of a shellfish origin, for when a great painter has 
made a bad finger or ill-shaped hand, however grand the 
face or form or subject, the fastidious spectator instantly 
closes up all the doors of enjoyment, and thinks that the 
artist should have followed the plow. So when a public 
singer offers to an assemblage one false note, the great 
unrelenting condemnation sets in, and all go home not 
glad at the sweet sounds they have heard, but angry that 
a person should have taken their money for a flat note. 
It would require years for that vocalist to heal the 
wounded public. 

The Death of Caste. 

Even the more sensible Greeks in Athens once had six 
grades of humanity: Priests, mechanics, shepherds, hun- 
ters, plowmen and soldiers. By a fine process of differ- 
entiation the early Greeks found a difference between the 



24 ECHOES 

mechanic and the plowman, and between the farmer and 

the hunter. In our age and land the mind longed to be 

released from all this oppressive straightness, and on 

meeting an Emerson and a Webster it did not wish to be 

told that they were degraded farmers, that Washington 

was a low-born surveyor, and Franklin only a low, inky 

printer. Our Nation came from a desire to escape the 

oppressive caste of all barbarous times, and to reach and 

enjoy the broader country into which the Lord seemed 

willing to lead his children. 

I 
Creeds Harmful to Worship. 

A large part of the church creed has been inimical to 
worship, and much that was not hostile has been irrele- 
vant. No close definition of a trinity or of the will, or of 
the creation of man from dust or from a rib, no detail 
about Noah or Samson has ever added a single flower to 
the altar of love and reverence. The eternal doom of 
men for Adam's sin has never made the name of God 
beautiful. Very much of the creed has been an enemy to 
the joy of God's house. It was an error of the theologians 
that the human race could adore where it could not 
admire and conld love the deeds of an unjust power. 

The Music is More than the Notes. 

The Bible need not pass in person into the common 
school, because the great soul of that book has journeyed 
outward, and now the gems in the book are only a few 
compared with those that sparkle in the wide world of 
truth and beauty. Cardinal Newman's hymn, "Lead 
K^'^dly Light," is not the Bible, but it came out of it. 
It ""^as once a Bible grain, but it now is a field of wheat 
all ripe and bending far away from the Egyptian tomb. 
The Russian hymn to the Peity — a hymn which was 



DAVTD SWING. 25 

once wrought out in gold letters and hung as a banner in 
the Emperor's palace — is not to be found in the Bible, 
but it arose from that sacred book as our Nation came 
from a few pilgrims. As the original eight notes of 
music have been forever expanding, and have become 
now the almost infinite music of the civilized nations, 
so the fundamental utterance of the Holy Scriptures have 
become enlarged into a varied magnificence of prose and 
poetr}^ If there be any sect, or any faction of 
a sect, which does not wish to see a Bible in 
a public school, then may the common literature 
of our race rush in and save education from being 
robbed of many of its greatest beauties and noblest senti- 
ments. Our age need not clamor for the original eight 
notes of Matthew, or Paul, or St. John, but it may well 
clamor for the music which the eighteen centuries have 
wrought out of the Galilean scale. The springs of the 
Mississippi are eclipsed by the river itself. 

Our Race Is in its Infancy. 

This is not a dream. If God made our world and our 
race it is not probable that we, the children of earth, 
can outdream the skill and beauty of the Infinite. Who 
are we that we should think of some great human 
destiny that a God had forgotten ? Do we not see that a 
hundred names are dying for want of greatness ? The 
words Baptist, Methodist, Calvinist, Episcopalian, 
farmer, mechanic, tradesman, are too small for a long 
career. They were cradle words, lisped in human 
infancy but they are not the language of man's later life. 
Should a man come to you now saying, " I am a Presby- 
byterian," or " I am a high-church Episcopalian," would 
you not see at once Paulette coming with her little plant 
growing in her green paper box ? Oh, Paulette ! would 



26 ECHOES 

the world could give thee a great outdoor field for 
thy plant and a massive tower for its vines, that they 

Might mantle o'er the battlement, 

By war or storm decayed, 
And sweetly fill each mournful rent 

Time's envious touch had made. 

We would love to give thee not tears of compassion, but 
those of a deep admiration. Is this a dream ? Why is 
our race founded upon a great God ? Is it that this God 
may never make any final use of the infinite ? Is it that 
He may never reveal to His children His wisdom and 
love ? Do we climb only to fall ? Do we run forward 
only to go back ? Oh, no ! Our race is still in its 
infancy. We are still lisping cradle words. Our great 
terms have not yet come. Humanity will run forward 
because it is led by the hand of a God, 

God Great by What He Gives. 

God is great not only in what He has, but in what He 
gives away. He owns all the colors, but they are poured 
out upon the world for us. The clouds catch some, the 
rainbow some, the flowers some, the human cheek some 
tint, but they are all for us as well as the Creator. 
God owns the sun, but what does he do with the extra 
sunbeams ? Ask our world on this day of spring. Ask 
all the human beings that live on this planet. . Ask the 
birds and the dumb animals, and all will say that the 
sunbeams are for God and us. The sea is His and ours. 
The midnight sky is for Him and us. We need not the 
old times to come back and create more love of gold, but 
we pray for the days to come when human goodness and 
beauty will be like God's colors and light poured out for 
all in great profusion. 



DAVID SWING. 27 

Caste is Weak. 

In India there are thirty-six shapes of human condition 
between the Brahman that may be worshiped and the 
widow who might be burned. This is the land in which 
the thirty-six discriminations are to be erased. In 
England the shopkeeper is still far below the personage 
called the "gentleman." Caste is weak, but it still 
prevails; but the world is rolling along gracefully toward 
a time when all the old, cruel names will give place to the 
one high rank of intelligence and honor. The intelli- 
gence and honor of a farmer will make the plow an 
ornament ; the printing press of a Franklin and a Childs 
will be turned by honor into a coat of arms ; the merit of 
mind and heart will make the youth or the maiden have an 
ancestry from God ; education and a Christlike character 
will make woman into a queen ; her heraldry need be 
only the rose on her bosom ; culture and righteousness 
will open all the doors of fashion and office and fame. 
Children born in humblest poverty can be reborn in the 
mighty mansion of humanity. 

The Pulpit Must March with the Age. 

Aside from the privilege of seeking and finding what 
is most true and the happiness which attends the con- 
sciousness of mental freedom, those outside of rigid 
orthodoxy are better able to answer the objections of the 
new generation to a life of faith and worship. While no 
form of Christianity can rest upon what may be called a 
wholly rational basis it is desirable that there be the 
least possible quantity of antagonism between the 
Church and common sense. There was an age once that 
loved the miraculous more than the natural, and which, 
like children in presence of a story-teller, was most im- 



28 ECHOES 

pressed by the tales which were farthest removed from 
all human experience and observation ; but few of the 
qualities of that period remain. Voltaire, Hume, 
Thomas Paine, Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, Renan 
and Strauss have passed over the world, and the pulpit 
that follows such names must differ from the pulpit 
which went before them. 

Humanity Waiting for Noble Deeds. 

The v/elfare of mankind is no longer waiting for 
words, but for noble actions. The song of charity has 
been well sung by all grades of voices and the self- 
denying religion of Jesus has been well preached to this 
generation. The presses are all busy with the literature 
of kindness, and each drama and each novel finds its 
climax in the triumph of the poor. All has come except 
the triumph. The quantity of humane philosophy on 
the one hand is equaled by nothing so perfectly as by 
the quantity on the other hand of ignorance and help- 
lessness and sorrow. 

The Worship of God an Unfading Flower. 

In these days of universal complaint and unrest the 
heart need not be empty of good and peace. The 
worship of God is an unfading flower. It cares no more 
for human theology than the skylark cares about the size 
and distance of the sun. Behold the unchanging good- 
ness of God ! The leaves have come back to our forests. 
Trees a thousand years old are bedecked again in verd- 
ure. The roses that bloomed for Anacreon have come 
back for us. The olive trees that wove a shade for 
Christ are in our world still. The carpet of flowers and 
grass is spread upon America again. It was unrolled 
before the feet of Washington, and now it is unrolled 



DAVID SWING. 29 

for us. Thus the worship of Goi need meet with no 
end or decline in the human heart. It is a lifelong 
beauty and a lifelong happiness. Man need not be a 
theologian or a sectarian. Life will be full to overflow- 
ing to the heart that is a worshiper. 

Oriental Figures. 

Nearly all of Oriental speech was boldly figurative. 
The four men who came running breathlessly to Job, the 
first one announcing an ambush by the Sabeans, the 
second one telling of a shower of fire, the third one in- 
forming the good man of a raid by the Chaldeans, the 
fourth one announcing a cyclone of full modern violence, 
are just like the men and women of Bunyan, or like the 
leopard, the wolf, and the lion which suddenly appeared 
before Dante when he began to advance into the gloomy 
forest. That these four calamities should have befallen 
Job in one da57 ; that each force took some peculiar 
property, the Sabeans, oxen; the Chaldeans, camels; the 
fire, the sheep; the wind, the house; and that each 
tumult left one man only alive to tell its special tale, and 
that Job's best friends sat in silence with him for seven 
days and nights upon the ground to help him bear his 
sorrow are not the details of history, but of picturesque 
literature. In all those lands and times which created 
the books of the Old and New Testaments, to be a 
writer was to be an artist, a painter. To find the mean- 
ing of those Scriptures the student must make the ex- 
ternal phenomena to be those creations which art employs 
for conveying some spiritual idea to the heart. 

The Reconciliation of Christianity and Common Sense. 

It will be easier for the clergy to cease to be Calvinists 
and literalists than it will be for the rising generation to 



30 ECHOES 

cease to be reasonable. In this dilemma, it is easy to 
determine where the change of the future will come. A 
great reconciliation must be brought about between 
Christianity and the improved common sense — between 
the Author of nature and the Author of religion, that 
faith and law may both have their places in the life of 
man. Faith will always be willing to believe in a world 
bej^ond this; in rewards for the righteous, and punish- 
ment for the guilt}^; in a world to come not made with 
hands, as the world that now is was not made by human 
fingers. Faith will look backward and forward toward 
a great cause, but this looking will be founded upon the 
sublimit}^ of the objects and upon the feeling that there 
are places in the universe where the word law must give 
place to the word God. It will be a misfortune if the 
pulpit shall continue to compel this faith to descend from 
these majestic heights, and embrace lovingly miracles 
which possess no bearing upon the life and hopes of man- 
kind. 

Something That Was not a Mistake. 

When the modern critics in the church and out of it are 
enlarging upon the "Mistakes of Moses" and upon the 
historical childishness of the Bible, they should not for- 
get to tell us that there ran through the whole Bible 
period a something that was no mistake, a something 
whose history arises up before us as real as the earth it- 
self and as beautiful as its four seasons, as magnificent 
as its June. That something was worship ! Theology 
came and went; the laws of Moses were passed and obej^ed 
and repealed, fables were told and forgotten, Paul and 
Apollos differed, James and John were unlike, but in 
worship all seemed to meet and the Jacob who saw angels 
on the night-ladder is beautifully akin to St. John and 



DAVID SWING. 31 

Paul and all are wonderfully akin to our age that sings 
the one hymn of the whole race, 

"Nearer, My God, to Thee.'' 

The Robe of Thought. 

Never before was the earth so covered with the rich 
drapery of learning and wisdom and romance. Kven the 
sleeping literature of the old East has been translated 
into our language, and thus Asia, and China and Persia 
speak over again, words that fell like manna many centu- 
ries ago. The month of June cannot weave for the prai- 
ries a vestment of grass and flowers richer than that robe 
of high thought which the past has woven for the nine- 
teenth century. 

The Scotch Heather. 

That, Greek who said he did not wish to belong to one 
city, but to all cities was a forerunner of our age. How 
dear to each of you is Germany ! how dear France ! how 
dear Kngland! The Scotch heather is our flower just as 
well. We can all sing the praises of that purple cover- 
ing of the hills. Chicago and Edinburgh alike love it: 

Flower of the waste! the heath fowl shuns 

For thee the brake and tangled wood; 

To thy protecting shade she runs. 

Thy tender buds supply her food; 

Her young forsake the mother's plumes 

To rest upon thy opening blooms. 

Bloom of the desert though thou art, 
The deer that range the mountain free. 
The graceful doe, the stately hart 
Their food and shelter seek from thee; 
The bee thy early blossom greets 
And draws from thee her choicest sweets. 



32 ECHOES 

How to I/ove Christ. 

What an illogical attitude it was for the old church to 
assume that an admiration and deep love for Christ 
were of no value ! Unless man worshiped him as God, 
man was hopelessly lost ! All high and profound 
admiration was only love thrown awaj^ Christ must be 
confessed to be the creator and be worshiped as such. 
This view came from the old idea that God was waiting 
for fame and presents from earth, and that Jesus of 
Nazareth was waiting also for honors and fame from the 
fields of mortalit}'. We seem coming to an age when ail 
the admiration and reverence each heart maj^ cherish for 
the Son of Man will become a part of that heart's treas- 
ure. If we bless the noonday sun for his light and heat 
and beaut}^ we may have the light and the blessing. 
The sun is too great to need them. So if man loves the 
Christian Savior, that love will enter into the human soul 
to become a part of its spiritual treasure. When the 
fire worshipers adored the sun they did not know how 
vast he was ; that he was a million miles in diameter, 
and could cheer a thousand planets as easily as he illu- 
minated this one world. But although so unmeasured, 
that flaming orb poured his light upon humanity and 
made the four seasons and all the life and beaut}^ of the 
globe. It was enough for the heart. Those children of 
Zoroaster did not worship as astronomers, but as lovers 
of sunbeams. Thus when the heart thinks of Christ it 
need not act as an old church theologian, but only as a 
heart full to the brim of worship or love or admiration. 
After the old theologians had decided that to love Christ, 
but not as a Creator, was such a hopeless ruin for the 
soul it must have been a surprise to see the moral beauty 
of the Channings and their large school. The surprise 



DAVID SWING. 33 

ends at last in the new truth that the soul can love a 
sunbeam without knowing the diameter of the sun. 

Man Made by I/ittle Things. 

Man is made by little things. His soul seems made 
like his body as if by the heaping up of cells. In each 
cubic inch of the human body there are a few millions of 
cells. These are so concatenated as to compose at last 
the form of a Washington or a Beatrice. The formation 
of a good soul is not otherwise, and each little part is 
essential to the peace of the sum total. Little influences 
combine and shape the heart. It is not quite enough to 
say : He is an American ; she is a Northerner, or a 
Southerner ; for there are a million influences at work 
here or there, and not each one will respond to the touch 
of the same million. No one large term will save us ; 
for Aaron Burr was an American ; the Sioux Indians 
are sons of the temperate zone, and Henry VIII was a 
Christian. The valuable thing is the many little or 
separate facts which fall under the broad term. The 
word ' ' Galilean ' ' did not harm Christ because the ten 
thousand thoughts and deeds of His soul ran counter to 
the reproachful epithet, and carried him far away from 
the old generality. 

What Is a Citis^en? 

A citizen is a soul before which all humanity moves in 
its organic and individual form; a soul that does not live 
only for itself; a heart that feels the pain of the millions 
and that grows ambitious for the human race; that loves 
not the flowers of its own garden only, but the heather of 
Scotland, the red poppies of France, and the great sun- 
flowers of Holland. Those who migrate to this continent 
and here oppose law and fling bombs into the streets, 



34 ECHOES 

were never citizens of Germany, or of any land. They 
do not possess that kind of mind that can appreciate the 
progress and happiness that may come to man from his 
country. They are without a country because their 
minds are too narrow to hold the idea of a State. When 
at last sectarian names shall perish, they will perish before 
the face of a great, even a majestic name — that of the 
Christian citizen. The former term will reveal a relation 
to Christ, the latter a revelation to humanity. 

Reason and Imagination. 

Reason separated from a warm imagination may be 
useful in that kind of ability which comes from concen- 
tration upon a single object of toil. Hence Zeno, Socra- 
tes, Seneca, Kpictetus, Aurelius, a Kempis, Pascal, Har- 
riet Martineau and John Stuart Mill, were of great use- 
fulness to the human family, for from them came many 
lessons in a noble ethics; but they were special toilers 
and passed life under deep clouds. They helped unveil 
a half of the universe, but the other half they left under 
the empire of night. They were all destitute of that 
buoyancy of soul which has made for humanit}^ its art, 
its music, its song, its laughter, its love, its worship and 
its hopes. We are glad they all lived and toiled, but we 
are glad also that others lived also to cover the naked 
trees with foliage, their outline world with green grass 
and sweet flowers. Logic without passion cannot make 
a world. 

The Gate Beautiful. 

The gates which lead out of orthodoxy, of the severer 
form, without leading away from Christianity are not 
many, but they are plainly visible and very great. One 
of these portals, through which many pass to more of 



DAVID SWING. 35 

liberty and peace, is that of Spiritual Interpretation. It 
is the gate Beautiful. Of those who read not the letter, 
but the spirit, the cardinal principle is that a figure is 
better than a fact. If Lot's wife had a special order to 
migrate from Sodom and seek some more moral neighbor- 
hood, and, starting to obey, she turned back and became 
a pillar of salt, the history contains no valuable lesson 
for other women and other men, unless they top should 
receive a special command; but if Lot's wife stood for 
any and ever}^ sinful and giddy woman who hesitates 
and falters in the path of duty, then the lesson is for all 
places and times, and the modern empty-minded and 
wicked wife is only a pillar of rock or cla}^, and is not a 
grand soul in God's exquisitely-wrought world. 

Worship is for the Worshiper. 

May we not say that worship is for the worshiper. It 
is the human heart expressing itself and their rising on 
this utterance to some higher feeling and higher thought. 
As a father, friend or savior, God wants his children's love 
and hymns and prayer, but we must need them more than 
God needs them, for He is so rich and we are so poor. 
We rear an altar to him, but it is in reality for our own 
hearts, they so deeply need all those rich feelings that 
accompany the flowers and the hymns and prayers. 



— •}>H®®^»^* — 



LAST SERMON 



PREACHED BY 

PROFESSOR DAVID SWING 

IN 

Ce?itral Music Hall, Chicago, Sujiday Morning , Mar. 20, ' g^j. 



"I,ABOR SOWING TAR:eS." 

' ' While men slept the enemy sowed tares among the 
wheat." — Matt, xiii., 2^. 

It would be a happiness to all of us could we meet 
to-day having in our hand branches from the 
woods or shells from the shore where w^e ma}^ have 
recently attempted to find pleasure and rest, but the 
events of the last few months and the gloom of the 
future have stolen from prairie and seacoast their long- 
found charm. 

The trees and the waters have for man}- weeks past 
sighed over the infirmities of our country. 

To find the images of greatness we have been com- 
pelled to look into the past. When President Cleveland 
intervened, and, perhaps, saved this cit}- from being 
plundered and burned, some men feared to thank him 
for such a quick intervention. July must deal very 
geutlj- with criminals who are to vote in November. 

Two Black Passions. 

Not since 1861 has the skj-been as dark as it is to-day. 
We have unconsciously built up within this generation 

36 



DAVID SWING. 37 

two black passions — the one is the feeling that money is 
the only thing worth living for, and the other is that 
work must hate capital. Thus the level of all society is 
lowered, the moneyed class by its worship of gold, the 
other class by its life of hate. While wealth has in- 
flamed its possessors and worshipers there has lived and 
talked an army of angry orators, whose purpose has been 
to make the men who work in the vineyard hate the men 
who pay them at nightfall. In such circumstances the 
vineyard will soon be first a battlefield and then a desert. 
It would seem that all the Christian clergy, Catholic 
and Protestant, and all the ethical teachers should this 
autumn enter into a new friendship with these two dis- 
cordant classes and preach to both alike the gospel of a 
high humanity. The churches and pulpits of all grades 
possess a vast influence. They do not hold any ' ' key of 
the situation ' ' or any ' ' balance of power ; ' ' they cannot 
open and close the gates of the earthly heaven end bell 
for America, but they possess an enormous moral force — 
a power that should no longer be exhausted upon little 
theological issues and practices. All the intellectual and 
spiritual resources of the pulpit should be exhausted in 
the effort to advance human character. Society needs 
speedy and large additions to' both its righteousness and 
its common sense. 

Were the City's Salvation. 
What saved the country from a great calamity last 
July was the fact that the schoolhouse, the church, and 
the press of the last fifty years had quietly created an in- 
telligence large enough to stand between the people and 
their ruin. When the new kind of autocrat ordered all 
the railway wheels to stop between the two oceans and 
had sat down to enjoy the silence of locomotives and iron 



38 ECHOES 

rails, there were so many noble and educated men in the 
railway service that the voice of the autocrat was the 
only noise that died out. It was not President Cleve- 
land alone that came between us and a great calamity. 
He was aided by the high common sense of a large 
majority of the railway employes. The railway union 
of working men was not formed for a career of mingled 
cruelty and nonsense, but that men might help each 
other in honorable ways and in hours of great wrong 
and need. 

The Heart of the Pulpit. 

Nearly all clergymen stand close to the people. They 
are reared in the philosophy that gives bread to the 
hungry. The gospel of Christ is one of infinite sym- 
pathy. Men who from choice enter the ministry of the 
Judean religion are never so happy as when they see the 
laborer sit down under a good roof to a table spread with 
abundant food. In the life of the average clergyman a 
large part of his thought and public utterance and actual 
labor and sympathy is given to what is called the com- 
mon people. The upper classes need little. There is 
nothing in the millionaire that appeals to the heart. 
The rich are so self-adequate that they may draw admir- 
ation and esteem, but not sympathy. The heart of the 
pulpit is freely given to the middle and lower classes. 
In all time the common people have atttacted to them- 
selves the most of both philosophy and poetry, but the 
attention and affection they won in the former times seem 
weak compared with the love that has been flung to 
them in this passing century. Under the influence of 
this sympathetic philosophy wages have been advanced, 
humane laws have been passed, the facts of health and 
disease have been studied, and new action has come with 



DAVID SWING. 39 

new light ; and when into such an age of both inquiry 
and action there is projected such a scene as that of last 
July the spectacle does not belong to reason or humanity, 
but only to despotic ignorance and ill-will. 

IfSibor Must Be I/aw-Abiditig. 

Labor may, and even must, organize, but the laborers 
must organize as just and law-abiding men, country-lov- 
ing men, and not as bandits. The depressing memory of 
last July is not to be found in the fact that labor was 
organized, or wholly in the fact that it "struck." The 
strike was indeed perfectly destitute of common sense, 
but the chief disgrace of the hour lay in the willingness 
of free men to obey a central despot and join in such acts 
of wrong and violence as would have disgraced savages. 
Benevolence is humiliated that it must feed and clothe 
men who will break the skull or kick to insensibility the 
brother who wishes to earn bread for his hungry family. 

It was discovered last July that some of the labor 
unions employ fighting men to go to and fro to hunt up 
and knock down those who do not join in the folly — 
those who are satisfied with their wages or who must 
work. Not every workman is a trained pugilist. So 
men are hired to spend the day or the week in pounding 
men who are noble and industrious. The cry, " lam an 
American," does not avail as much in Chicago as the 
words, "I am a Roman," availed Paul in Jerusalem. 
When Paul said he was a Roman the mob fell back, but 
when Mr. Cleveland said, "These pounded men are 
Americans, ' ' it was thought by some that he was not the 
proper person to make the remark. And yet our pulpits 
have for fifty years been trying to make Christians and 
our schools and printing presses have been trying to 
endow these Christians with sense. 



40 ECHOES 

Christ in Human I^ife- 

Quite a number of Clergymen have banded together to 
preach the gospel of personal righteousness ; that 
Christianity is Christ in human life, Christ in society, 
Christ in money, and Christ in work. We preachers 
must all come to that definition of the church. This 
height of thought will make us all dizzy for a time, but 
the quality of our old Christianity will not meet the de- 
mands of a republic. A despotism may be sustained by 
Catholics or Protestants, but a republic must be sus- 
tained by men. 

I^abor guilds are as old as work and capital, but one 
kind of labor guilds is new, and let us all pray that they 
shall not live to become old. In the darkness of the 
fourteenth century the young workingman looked hap- 
pily forward to the day when he could be admitted into 
the guild of his craft. His mother and sisters looked 
after his habits, that his character might be above re- 
proach. The» approach to the initiation day was much 
like a youth's approach to the first communion. New 
clothes, a feast, new conduct, new inspiration, new 
hopes came with the hour that placed this new name 
upon the noble roll. But this was in the dark ages. In 
the close of the nineteenth • century, when the heavens 
and earth are ablaze with the light of Christ ; when love 
for man is written everywhere in letters of gold ; when 
congresses of religion meet to teach us that all men are 
brethren, then the men who join a guild shake a blud- 
geon at their brother and are advised by a reckless king 
to buy a gun. Some men call this phenomenon a com- 
mercial disturbance. It is nothing of the kind. In the 
South Sea Islands it is barbarism, among the carnivorous 



DAYID SWING. 41 

animals it is called ferosity, in our civilized land it is 
infamy. 

The Organiajation of Unions. 

It seems evident that Christianity asks laborers to be 
organized into societies. If a church may be organized 
that Christians may help each other and confer with each 
other about all things that pertain to the church, why 
may not carpenters and railway men form a union that 
many minds and many hearts may find what is best for 
the toilers in their field. The word church means a 
gathering of people, but if the exigencies of religion may 
demand an assembly so may the exigencies of a trade. 
But none of these assemblages can sustain any relations 
whatever to violence or any kind of interference with the 
liberty or rights of man. For a vast group of railway men 
to sign away their personal liberty and permit some one 
man to order them around as though slaves is a spectacle 
pitiful to look upon , but to band together for interference 
with the rights of man is not a mental weakness, but a 
:rime. 

It is a great task for a labor guild to study and fully 
xearn what are the facts and the need itself. Before men 
quit their employers they should all know the reason of 
the move. After men have been idle for a winter and 
have come to regular work and regular pay, if they 
hasten to strike their reason ought to be so large that the 
whole world can see it. But we do things differently h\ 
enlightened America. Our men hasten to throw down 
tools and their wages, and at last, when starving, they 
ask some committee to make a microscopical search for 
the reason Df the distress. And before this reason is 
known, eminent men express themselves as in full sym- 
pathy with it. All the ratlway wheels in America were 



42 KCHOES 

ordered toscop out of sympathy with a reason which a 
committee was looking for with a microscope. The rail- 
ways were giving work to four millions of people. This 
work was "called off" by a man with some telegraph 
blanks, and the poor families supported b}^ the North- 
western lost $200,000, the workmen of the Illinois Central 
$164,000. of the Milwaukee and St. Paul $175,000, and 
thus on to the millions, all which loss was ordered from 
sympathy with men who were getting $600 a year. 

No Time for Despots. 

Labor unions will waste their work by the millions of 
dollars' worth and will soil their name and ruin the sym- 
pathy of literature, art, and religion, as long as they 
trust their cause to hot-headed, ignorant, illogical men. 
Labor should have for its chieftains our Franklins or our 
John Stuart Mills. These should be its guide. If our 
land possesses no such minds, then are we on the eve of 
untold misfortune. When labor shall have Franklins for 
its walking delegates, it will enter upon a new career. 
Capital will confer with it. Congresses of workingmen 
will meet, and men will find the wages of each toiler and 
of each new period, but nothing can be done by a foolish 
despot with a club. Yes, something can be done — the 
Republic can be hopelessly ruined through a ruined 
manhood. 

The wages and whole welfare of the laboring man have 
been much advanced in' twenty-five years, but the gun 
and club have taken no part in this progress. Conference, 
thought, reason, benevolence, have accomplished the 
blessed task, and they will do much more when the}^ are 
invited to help our race. Moral power makes laws. It 
shames the guilty. It dissolves adamant. It founded 



DAVID SWING. 43 

the ChrivStian church. It has civilized whole races ; 
it has emancipated the mind; it has freed slaves. 

It may easily be remembered that a London man a 
few yesrs ago unveiled the wrongs inflicted upon poor 
young girls This injustice did not need to be examined 
by a microscope. The heart of London became aflame 
with indignation. The Archbishop of Canterbury and 
the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning, the 
Bishop of London, Sir William Harcourt, and Sir Richard 
Cross flung their minds and hearts into the cause and the 
Parliament passed a new law for the longer and diviner 
protection of girls. 

Power of Moral Influence. 

To many labor unions all talk of moral power carries 
the weight of only nonsense. The moral influence the- 
ory is indeed defective, but it is the only one within 
human reach. If a dezen men should resolve that they 
have rights to seats in a street car, their theory seems 
good, but on getting into one of these vehicles they find 
the seats all taken. Unless they can club those persons 
out of those seats the theory of those dozen unionists is 
very defective. When a man resolves that he ought to 
sit down and then stands up, his resolution is defective. 
But what makes it defective ? The rights of the man who 
is sitting down. So when a set of men resolve that they 
will work only for four dollars a day they hold an im- 
perfect platform because of the rights of the men who 
will work for three dollars. Should a clergyman resign 
his pnlpit because his people will not pay him $6,000 a 
year his theory is incomplete, indeed, unless he can kill 
the preachers who will come for $5,000. But he must go 
to and fro with his imperfect theory. It is spoiled by the 
rights of other preachers. Thus, against all labor unions 



44 ECHOES 

not strictly moral, the laws of the human race rise up. 
The rights of mankind oppose them. All society is 
founded upon the rights of man, not of the man who 
works for $3 a da}^, but of the man also who works for 
$1 or for au}^ sum whate\ er. Any force in a labor union 
means anarch3^ A guild without violence may be im- 
perfect, but with violence it is infamous. 

They Need Good I/eaders. 

Where w^ould our city and perhaps our Nation have 
been in this September had not the laborers in the town 
of Pullman and in the whole land been for the most part 
law-abiding? The churches may confess the rashness of 
the strike, but we must forgive the mistakes of those who 
respected the rights of mankind and the laws oi the land. 
Mau}^ toilers were so patient and law-abiding as to give 
promise of being worthy citizens of a great country. 
What all those workmen need is a leadership worthy of 
their cause or their flag. 

The flag of labor is a perfectly glorious one — too grand 
to be carried by a fanatic or a simpleton or a criminal. 
Capital is nothing until labor takes hold of it. A bag 
will hold mone}^, but a bag cannot transform that money 
into an iron road, a bridge, a train of cars, an engine. 
An armful of bonds did not fling the bridge over the arm 
of the sea at Edinburgh; the bonds of England did not 
join the Mediterranean to the Red Sea; gold did not 
erect St. Peter's at Rome, nor did it lift up any of the 
sublime or beautiful things in any art. Money came 
along and attempted to bu}^ the canvases of angels, but it 
did not paint them. The millions of people who came 
here last summer did not come to see the millions of 
mone^^ but to see what labor had done with mone}^, and 
they saw a great spectacle. What domes 1 What arches! 



DAVID SWING. 45 

What "Courts of Honorl" What canals! What statues! 
What machines! What pictures! What jewels! What 
thought! What taste! What love! And yet the whole 
scene was the matchless emblazonry of labor. As God 
manifests himself in the external objects of earth and in 
the millions of stars, thus man speaks by his works and 
in our world labor sits enthroned. Capital is a store- 
house of seeds, labor is their field, their soil, their rain, 
and their summer time. Over a potency so vast and god- 
like only Wisdom herself should preside. If our age 
has any great men — men whose hearts are warm and 
pure, and whose minds are large as the world, it should 
ask them to preside over the tasks and wages of the 
laborer. Anarchy, crime, and folly should be asked to 
stand back. Those three demons may be called to the 
front when our laborers are seeking for poverty and 
disgrace. 

I^abor Hostile to I/abor. 

You have all heard of the hostility of capital and labor. 
But there is no special truth in the phrase. Labor is just 
as hostile, to labor. The whole truth is this: Man is 
not anxious to spend his money. There is a saying that 
"the fool and his money are soon parted," but we have 
not reached the maxim that labor loves to make presents 
to labor. Did you ever know a blacksmith who was 
happy to pay large bills to the plumber ? Are the carpen- 
ters anxious to have their tailors advance the price of a 
suit of clothes ? Are the "walking delegates" for the 
plasterers anxious to pay the farmer a dollar for wheat ? 
If reports be true there are laboring men in the West who 
are so hostile to the labor of their brothers that they are 
going to buy most all needful things in the shops of Eng- 
land. Thus labor is as great an enemy of labor as it is oi 



46 . ECHOES 

capital. The hostility between labor and money is a 
mischievous fiction gotten up by dreamers and profes- 
sional grumblers, who wish to ride into ofiice or fame by 
parading a love for the multitude. This false love ought 
soon to end its destructive career. Last June and July it 
cost the workingmen man}^ millions of dollars. Had 
some walking delegates of Christianity told these men 
that labor and capital are eternal friends; that labor is 
the language o^ money, the body it assumes, the life it 
lives, orr summer would have been full of industry and 
honor. How could Krupp hate the men who are doing 
his will xii massive iron ? How could Field hate the men 
who were laying his cable in the ocean ? The church 
must help stamp all our industrial falsehoods into the 
dust and must wave over all men the flag of brotherhood. 

The New Humane Philosophy. 

So rapidly has friendship grown between capital and 
labor that a law is now before the British Parliament 
looking to a compensation to each laborer or his family 
for injuries the workingman may have received in the 
execution of his task. When passed, this law will each 
year give $10,000,000 to the working class of the three 
islands. This law is not coming from the "club" or 
"gun," but from the Christianity of England. 

This new humane philosophy has counted all the toil- 
ers who have been injured in their toil. It saw fifty- 
seven men killed while building the Forth bridge and 
one hundred and thirty die among the wheels and 
machines used in digging the Manchester canal. This 
new kindness has studied longer and found that of each 
10,000 men employed on the railways fourteen are killed 
in a year and eighty badl}^ crippled. In the long past 
there was no love that counted these dead or injured 



DAVID SWING. 47 

men. A dead laborer was as a dead horse or a dead dog. 
The riots and destruction and barbaritj^ of last July set 
back all this new friendship and made brotherly love 
despair of the present and future. The evil one hath 
done this. Endless abuse, endless complaint, endless vio- 
lence, openly taught anarchy, have succeeded in making 
work the enemy of money. You can recall the Bible 
story of the person who came at night and sowed tares 
among the springing wheat. 

The fact that the United States army had to hasten 
hither to save life and property cannot all be charged 
upon the immigrants in our land. We have of late years 
been producing a group of Americans who care nothing 
for right or wrong and who have become the masters of 
all the forms of abuse and discontent. It is evident that 
the influx of anarchists ought to cease but we must not 
forget the crop our Nation is growing out of its own soil. 
All the cities seem uniting to make law ridiculous. The 
alien who will sell his vote for a few shillings is not so 
low as the American who will prefer these votes to prin- 
ciples. The immigrant may act through the absence of 
patriotism for his new land but the American acts through 
total depravit}^ 

The foreigners are generally manipulated by political 
confidence men who are home-made. 

The Making of Christian Character. 

The general theme of this morning is too large for the 
narrow limits of an essay, but it is possible for us to feel 
that our great Christian organism ought to be applied 
from these dark days onward to the making of the 
Christlike character. The church, Catholic and Protest- 
ant, has lived for all other causes, let it at last live for 
a high intelligence and for individual righteousness. 



48 ECHOES 

Literature and science and the public press will help the 
church. All these wide-open and anxious eyes must 
perceive clearly that our national and personal happiness 
must come from the study and obedience of that kind of 
ethics which became so brilliant in Palestine. Our Jew- 
ish friends need not call it Christian and our rationalized 
minds need not call it divine. What is desirable and 
essential is that its spirit shall sweep over us. Called 
by any name it is a perfect salvation for our country and 
for each soul. The time and money the church has 
given to metaph3^sical inquiry and teaching have been a 
total loss. In the great college courses there are studies 
in classic language and in high mathematics that 
strengthen the intellect, but no such virtue has ever been 
found to flow from the theological studies of the church. 
For hundreds of years the mind has found in these 
enigmas its slow doctrine. There thousands, even mil- 
lions, of thinkers have found their grave. There the 
colossal mind of even a Pascal grew confused and weak. 
There great men have lost their blessed earth while 
they were fighting over the incomprehensible. God did 
not give man this globe that it might be made a desert 
or a battlefield, but that it might be made the great 
home of great men. 

Kingdom of I^aw and I^ove. 

As often as creeds and dogmas have detached the 
mind from humanity, literature and art and science have 
rushed in to save the precious things of societ}^ But 
these agencies have done this only by carrying in prose 
and verse and science the laws of love, duty, and justice, 
by delineating man as a brother of all men and as a sub- 
ject in the might}" kingdom of law and love. In an age 
and in a Republic marked by an amazing effort to turn 



DAVID SWING. 49 

all things, all days, all life into gold, our pulpits must 
make a new effort to reveal and create man the spiritual 
being, man temperate, man studious, man a lover of 
justice, man the brother, man Christlike. The same 
science that is seeking and finding the sources of wealth 
and that is filling the 3'oung mind with longings to be 
rich can find and teach all the worth of a man as a 
spiritual being, and can compel a great Nation and a 
great manhood to spring up from the philosophy of the 
soul. 

To reach a result so new and so great the pulpit must 
select new themes. It must cull them from the field 
where the mob raves, from the shops where men labor, 
from the poverty in which men die, from the office where 
wealth counts its millions. Even so beclouded a pagan 
as Virgil sang that when the mob is throwing stones 
and firebrands and is receiving weapons from its fury if 
wisdom will only become visible and speak to them they 
will listen and at last obey. We have the mob, it is 
high time for a divine wasdom to speak to it. 

Our planet not only rolls on in the embrace of the 
laws of gravitation, of light and heat, vegetable and 
animal life, and in the strange encompassment of the 
electric ether, but it flies onward amid spiritual laws far 
more wonderful — laws of labor and rest, laws of mental 
and moral progress, laws of perfect justice and of uni- 
versal love. Oh, that God, by his almighty power, may 
hold back our Nation from destruction for a few more 
perilous years, that it may learn where lie the paths in 
which as brothers just and loving all may walk to the 
most of excellence and the most of happiness. 

END OF SERMON. 



50 KCHOKS 

Another and a Greater ''Gettysburg.'* 

One pageant has passed by, but another must come. 
The material scene that we call "Gettysburg" or "An- 
tietam" must all be reproduced in the spiritual domain. 
The first style of army has become silent. The second 
style of army must become eloquent. Generals and sol- 
diers have passed from these battle fields, and the major- 
ity of them have passed from life. The great Generals 
have passed away from these scenes, but these falling 
leaders only tell what death has been doing in that larger 
host. As Grant and Sherman and Sheridan have become 
silent, thus silent have become the regiments they led. 
How these heroes and troops filed along in youth and 
power thirty years ago! They kept time on the streets 
of all our cities, ''pouring onward to the ranks of war." 
What martial music filled the air! What cheers from the 
homes! How proud seemed the flags of the Nation, how 
solemn seemed the rumble of the artillery. Often all day 
and all night the men and the equipments of war poured 
along like a river in its flood. The lines of the great 
Italian come to memory: 

It hath been long ago my destiny to see 
Horsemen with martial order shifting camp, 
To onset sallying or in muster ranged, 
I^ight armed squadrons and swift foragers 
Scouring thy plains, Arezzo. 

Oh, what a memory beyond the power of poet's pen or 
painter's pencil! A scene now all sleeping in history. 
This first pageant gone, the second must spread before 
living eyes its new formof impressiveness. New leaders 
must come. New armies must move. New flags must 
wave. The soldiers of literature, the heroes of a high 
and noble politics, the regiments in pursuit of beauty, 



DAVID SWING. 51 

the volunteers of Nazareth, the soldiers of the infinite God, 
the vast army of the highest happiness and the highest 
right, must come and march and remarch, not with guns 
and with garments dyed in blood, but arra3^ed in all the 
jeweled draperies of peace. These must be eloquent to 
atone for those who are silent ; these must advance with 
bosom full of all high purpose, and must step with liv- 
ing foot and inspired heart among the three hundred 
thousand graves of the dead. 

Pigeons and Doves. 

It may be all our pigeons and doves came from some 
brown bird of the woods, but they will never all meet 
again in the unity of that brown bird. So our thousands 
of roses have come from one wild rose, but they can 
never return to that "mother bloom." So if Rome was 
indeed the "Mother Church" of us all, her scattered 
children might pause to bless her memory, but they can 
never find a path of return. As among the many roses 
there is a certain unity blessed to behold, but as their 
variety is everlasting, and can never be gathered up into 
the first leaf and first bud, so the "Mother Church" has 
scattered her children to the four winds of thought and 
will never see t hem around her hearthstone again. The 
onl}^ result to be hoped for and prayed for is that all her 
Protestant children may meet some day at the hearth- 
stone of the infinite God. 

The Insanity of Fanatics. 

What all parties need is to be delivered from the insan- 
ity of fanatics. But inasmuch as a minority in each 
nation is ruled by fanaticism, and since many pulpits, 
both Catholic and Protestant, are filled by men whose 
blind passions unfit them to teach or inflnence any assem- 



5^ ECHOES 

blage, the calmer minds of these two churches must make 
conspicuous the flag of the new Christian friendship, — 
a friendship that in argument can differ all day long and 
then sit at the same table at sunset. All the people must 
be taught that persecution is far away in the foolish past 
and that the era of wisdom and love has fully come. 
There is indeed a discord between the tw^o great bodies, 
but compared with the blood}^ past the discord is changed 
to harmon}^ We cannot expect all history to be fully 
erased in a day, but w^e can expect its crimson colors to 
fade. 

Dr. R. W. Patterson. 

A very great clergyman of our city. Rev. R. W. Pat- 
terson, har. just gone from life, leaving behind him a new 
Presbyterianism on whose fair proportions and beauties 
he had toiled for a half hundred years. From 3^outh he 
possessed a clear vision. Born in a slave State, he could 
look be3^ond its borders and detect Liberty standing as 
divine as John's angel in the sun. He turned his e3^e 
toward the Calvinistic philosoph}^ and there saw the love 
of God in chains more ironlike than those which held the 
African. Both on earth and in heaven love and justice 
seemed deeply disgraced. He saw also a creed which, 
instead of teaching the simple gospel of Jesus, exulted in 
the utterance of mysteries which not even an archangel 
could fathom. While 3^et a young man, only passing 
out of the hardships of povert}^ he began to hope for and 
work for the higher excellence of his church. As soon 
as this golden centur}^ discovered some better doctrine in 
theolog}^ or ethics he went with it to his own sanctuar}^ 
and attempted to fasten the new blossoms to its old altar. 
He alwa3^s went softly and bowing in reverence as he 
went, but now looking from his grave toward those 



DAVID SWING. 53 

altars, we see that the wreaths of new truth are all there. 
The younger pastors of the west find the sermon broader, 
richer, more human, more Christlike, and more spirited. 
Should they seek the reason of this new intelligence and 
of this diviner spirit they would find a part of that reason 
in the fact that the lofty form buried only yesterday toiled 
for a long time to empty the pulpit of great deformity 
and make it eloquent with Christian truth. His mantle 
need not fall upon any one mind. So rapid is the 
spreading of truth in our era that when this robe of an 
Elijah falls from heroic shoulders it is caught not by a 
person but by an age. 

I/iterature too light. 

Our age would be rapidly molding our eighty millions 
if its literature were as great as it is abundant. But the 
greater part of it is light. It is a love story or a joke. 
Its aim is the happiness of to-day and not the mighty 
civilization of the morrow. It has purity, indeed, and 
has merit, indeed, but it has the worth of silver rather 
than the worth of gold. We read, we enjoy, we smile, we 
laugh; but we put aside the volume and find our world 
no greater than it was before the book came. This light- 
ness would do less harm if the new generation held that 
wisdom that could mingle the gay present with the tre- 
mendous past ; but the new millions do not go to the 
past, they always run to the arms of the present. To 
the young there is only one June — the one just before 
them, but to the older hearts the Junes are many and run 
back to the centuries that are gone. 

"When the higher politics shall come!'' 

When the higher politics shall come the great houses 
assembled at Washington will not trifle will the people 



54 ECHOES 

all through dark days. They will issue great open 
letters of sympathy and hope, and the scattered millions 
will feel that their law-makers are sad in their sorrow 
and have only one wish — to find the immediate happi- 
ness of the people. 

Decoration Day. 

Decoration Day comes now like our other national 
days — not with a roll-call of any enemies, but with a 
loving roll-call of friends. As in our July festival, there 
is no anger toward King George or Victoria, or England, 
so in this May celebration there is no wrath hidden or 
expressed for the Johnsons and lyces and Jacksons who 
led once the hosts who fought against the country. The 
prosperity of the country, its peace and greatness, and 
that these were bought with the life of an army now 
invisible in the spirit world, are the thoughts which fill 
these passing hours. And the God of nature helps all 
these memorial periods in our world, whether they lie in 
religion or political life, b}^ His universal law that anger 
shall be temporary and good will perpetual. Nature 
has made storms transient, the blue sky more constant. 

When Citiaiens are Followers of Christ. 

Happy day for our world when each citizen shall be a 
follower of Jesus and shall have a nameless church in his 
own soul! His church will not need a long history 
because its greatness will not be back of the worshiper — 
a greatness mingled with blood and injustice, but this 
religious magnificence will all be within. Each heart 
will have its own priest and altar and sacraments. Its 
own bells of worship will ring in the soul. In that holy 
place perpetual chants shall sound. Then church names 
will be almost forgotten ; and holy men and women 



DAVID SWING. 55 

looking up through the blossoming trees or through their 
tears of joy and hope will at last read on the; sky the 
words of Jesus: "The kingdom of God is within 
you." 

A Touch of Satire. 

Are we to suppose that the Catholics and Protestants 
who are now combining to suppress low-lived literature 
are planning to burn each other at the stake ? Why toil 
to suppress vulgar books if these men are about to make 
murder a part of the gospel ? When we Protestants are 
invited to dine with Bishop Ireland or Cardinal Gibbons 
must we look out for poison in our coffee ? Must we 
carry a pistol in our dress coat ? Recently the Pope has 
issued an order that the clergy of Spain must not attend 
the bull fights hereafter. Is this order issued because 
Leo XIII. wishes the Catholic clergy to give their undi- 
vided attention to the killing of Protestants ? 

Spirituous Drink the Death of Thought. ♦ 

Some of the old poets thought the drinking-cup was a 
cup of poetry and eloquence, but the delusion has died 
under the accumulating witnesses of all times. Bach 
glass of spirituous drink is the death of clear and beauti- 
ful thought. The tongue thickens, the words lose their 
sharp outline, the eye its flash under even the best of 
wines. When God made man, He declared a partnership 
between temperance and inspiration, and made a cup of 
the emblem of all clear thought. 

Nature Speaking to Man. 

When the lonely traveler finds himself in France or 
Germany, how much he wishes his lips could speak its 
language! Such a power would make Germany or 



56 ECHOES 

France seem like home. Thus education is an acquaint- 
ance with all the voices of the world. The educated 
mind understands the language of the fields and the 
forests; let the stars speak to him in familiar words; the 
winds come in intelligible whisperings; he understands 
the songs of the birds; the flowers use his soul's dialect; 
he is deaf and dumb no longer; he hears all sounds; he 
speaks all languages; thesea iseloquent;the hills poetic. 
This education is valuable, not only because of its rela- 
tions to reading, writing and arithmetic, but also because 
it introduces man to the world. The plowed-up daisy 
drew the compassion of Robert Burns, the skylark and 
Shellej'' became friends; thus into the educated heart as 
into an urn the world empties all wisdom and beauty. 

Kindness Cannot Cease. 

If our infinite Father would mold all the millions of 
earth by influences forever sweet, gentle and most loving, 
then that kindness cannot cease. It will invade the 
morrow as it invaded the yesterday, and when death 
comes to man the hand of the Almighty in this last 
will be as gentle as the touch of a mother. God does not 
fling stones at his children. When Dante saw the divine 
chariot passing along on the border of heaven, a sweet 
light was above it and the wheels were almost blocked 
with flowers. 

A State Church Not Possible. 

The epoch of a dominant state church has passed by. 
It is told of an Episcopal bishop that he hoped for a day 
when all denominations would be one, and that one 
Episcopalian. There is no reason why some ardent 
Baptist might not cherish for his sect the same hope. 
What we cannot expect for the Episcopalian or the Bap- 



DAVID SWING. 57 

list we cannot expect or fear of the Roman Catholics. 
In barbarism minds ma}^ unite; in civilization they 
move toward variety. There may come a unity of hearts 
but not a unity of thought and doctrine. Thought open- 
like a fan, but it never closes again. If Rome once 
possessed the christian world it can never again enjoy 
such a possession. It is vain to call her our " mother," 
for when the children are old and scattered their 
"mother" is gone. Egypt was the "Mother of Na- 
tions." The Greek and Aryan and Hebrew worlds 
flowed down from the wisdom along the Nile, but Egypt 
cannot recall her children and enjoy again the unity she 
saw when the world was young. So the Latin empire 
became again the "Mother of States " and, after the 
unity of Julius Cccsar, came the children called Spain, 
France, England, Germany, Norwa}^, and Sweden, but 
that old Latin mother can never call in these nations and 
change their customs back into Latin customs and their 
languages into the tongue spoken by Cicero. After 
the children have come the mother disappears. 

The Human Feet Must Tramp. 

To other sources of civilization must be added the 
pursuit of all high and noble beauty. It is admitted 
that the pursuit of the beautiful will not always bring 
virtue, but its conquests are very great. It gives to the 
young and the old a blessed reason of being. It makes 
paths that are of more attraction than those of sin. The 
human feet must tramp, tramp. They are sandaled for 
all the bright days of many a year. Art can open up 
before society many paths far more attiractive than those 
of vice or crime. The educated mind is afraid of vice. 
Of two paths it will select the one bordered with the 
richer flowers. 



58 ECHOES 

Man's Thoughts Invisible. 

In the class of the beautiful comes literature. It 
differs from painting, sculpture and music only in this — 
its thoughts have no sensual form. The eye, ear, and 
touch cannot find them. We can hear a sonata of 
Beethoven, but we cannot hear our reflections on immor- 
tality or our happiness over Virgil or Shakespeare. All 
is within. Man's thoughts are invisible. The painter 
needs a canvas, the sculptor a piece of marble, the 
musician a piano, but the literary taste and art need 
nothing but the soul. When the heart is alone its 
orchestra and gallery are within. The spiritual instru- 
ments are played by spiritual hands. 

We Cannot Wait for Names. 

The Presbyterians called themselves the "Old" and 
" New," but in names there is no intrinsic value. The 
Baptists do not say anything about "old " and " new," 
but if any one will read the recent papers and addresses 
about the contents of the Old Testament they will per- 
ceive that *' New Baptists " have fully come. The age 
is too great to wait for names to be given. A strong, 
healthy, laughing baby does not refuse to grow simply 
because the name and baptism have not appeared. After 
awhile it will creep out of its cradle; it will walk and 
talk and run with the utmost disregard of the delay of 
the robed clergyman and his drops of holy, naming 
water, Thus the name of ' ' New Baptist " or " New 
Catholic " is not of any worth. Without any advent of 
title these children of the nineteenth century have 
escaped from the cradle and are running around happy 
and loose. 



DAVID SWING. 59 

God and the People. 

In our day the danger of a religious war is made less 
by the fact that the Roman Church has found its great- 
est enemy to be contained in the words "Deism" and 
"unbelief." The majority of mankind is drifting toward 
unbelief. It was not Protestantism that took Italy away 
from the Papal throne. No Protestants disturbed Italy, 
but there came instead a political science like that of 
Franklin and Jefferson. Mazzini as early as 1831 organ- 
ized a society called ' 'Young Italy, ' ' Its purpose was an 
escape from despotism, its motto was that of Voltaire 
and Paine: "God and the People." 

What is a Church? 

The word ' 'church' ' contains no longer its old signifi- 
cance. Civilization has broken the church into a million 
fragmrnts. The words "piety," "righteousness" and 
"love" have expel' ed ecclesiasticism from its throne. 
Wherever two Christian hearts loving Christ and each- 
other shall, unaided by priest or preacher, take the com- 
munion, at home or abroad, or under a tree, pine or 
palm, there will the true church be, because in presence 
of two such souls forms lose all their meaning and the 
words Protestant and Catholic sink. In the communion 
of the heart with Christ the bread and wine handed the 
lips by a friend is better than when offered by some un- 
known priest. 

Harmony Born of I^ove. 

The education of mankind tends toward variety. We 
now have many forms of music, because the minds of the 
world have moved out of the simple primative taste. 
Each desirable object comes iii multiplicity. The richer 
the soil and the summer, the more varied the products, 



6o ECHOES 

So as civilization advances it becomes many colored. 
The only place in which unity can dwell is the heart. 
Different men of a hundred creeds meet in the inner tem- 
pie of the soul. It is the perfection of civilization to dif- 
fer in thought, but to be one in a divine friendship. 
There is a unit}' of doctrine, but it is limited to a few 
great principles. Awa}' from a few universal truths the 
harmony is composed wholh- of love. 

The Battle Hymns of the Republic 

Out of the upheaval of the heart came with many 
other songs the ' ' Battle H^-mn of the Republic, ' ' whose 
wonderful words and music sounded in all the camps of 
rest and in all the marches when full of either victor}' or 
defeat. It was alw^a3'S an inspiration : 

Mine eyes have seen the glorj- of the coming of the 

Lord, 
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of 

wrath are stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of His terrible 

swift sword ; 

His truth ismarch^'ng: on. 



'& 



Of this h3'mn the last verse stands almost without an 
equal in all the known battle songs of an}' land : 

In the beaut}^ of the lilies Christ was bom across the sea, 

With a glor}" in his bosom that transfigures 3-ou and me. 

As he died to make men holy let us die to make men 

free, 

While God is marching on. 

A poor Use of a Great Mind. 

One of the worst uses to which a great mind can be 
put is that of caring for a tremendous estate. That 



DAVID SWING. 6 1 

mind had better make the estate less tremendous and 
then have some days and years left for all the beauties of 
wide civilization. One of the American citizens has put 
a few millions into a university, and when one visits that 
institution and sees the groups of professors and the 
army of ambitious students from all parts of the world, 
sees all the matchless phenomena of the spiritual realm, 
the heart becomes full of the feeling that a rich man is 
ruined when he simply cares for an immense estate, and 
is re-created in God's image when he gives ?t away. 
Another rich man can see a wonderful institute standing 
before him. It scatters education to thousands. It 
cuts the coupons from bonds and turns them into an 
advanced human character. These millionaires who are 
thus blessing our city and our land widen their life and 
the public life by becoming benefactors. It is rumored 
that coupons when due are cut off with a pair of scissors. 
If this be true, no great mind ought to be only a pair of 
scissors. He should be a divine intellect, and possess a 
God-like pity for the people. 

Our Nation must be Just. 

If the Catholics are seeking political office they are so 
far pursuing their path of political right. They would 
be a peculiar kind of American if they were not running 
for office. There can be complaint, only when the per- 
sons appointed or elected favor their church to the injury 
of the office or the Nation. Up to this date many of 
these persons are appointed not because they are Catho- 
lics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans and 
citizens. Our Nation must be just, and it cannot be just, 
if it denies a Roman Catholic the right of holding any 
office within its confines, 



62 KCHOKS 

Religion will no more toil alone. 

Once we depended too much upon the church. It 
must be only one of the divine graces. It is the central 
figure of the group. To beauty it adds sublimit3^ But 
religion will never toil alone again. All morals, all 
ethics, all literature, all art, all humane teachings, all 
studies in college or at home, all the little circles that 
meet over the pages of Browning or Shakespeare or 
Dante, all the libraries, all the rooms full of art must 
combine in this assault upon the hard and insensate 
multitude. The people will all be transformed as the 
very trees danced to that magic harp of old. There need 
be no doubt over the result; for the plan is that of 
our Creator. He did not send man into this life that he 
might be the ' 'food for powder, ' ' but that he might be 
transformed by heaven's grace. 

The Barren Wars of History. 

To him who walks over the fields of Waterloo or Aus- 
terlitz, or who reads of Inkerman and Balaklava, comes 
the sad inquirj'-: For what was all this carnage? Under 
Tennyson's poem, on the charge of the "Six Hundred,'' 
there is no massive logic to check the reader's grief. 
From the Russian and Turkish battlefields thirty thous- 
and skeletons were shipped to England as bone-dust tp 
be sold for the English fields and gardens. Of the fifteen 
hundred battles recorded in history few contained any 
bearing upon the higher philosophy of man's life. Even 
Waterloo offers to the thoughtful traveler nothing but 
sadness. If Napoleon might have become a despot his 
defeat at Waterloo only established other despotisms. 
He could not have added anything to the terrors of the 
RuSvSian throne. The thinking world does not know to- 



DAVID SWING. 63 

day whether Napoleon ought to have failed or ought to 
have tiiumphed on every battlefield. Thus the soldiers 
of Wellington and Napoleon did not know for what they 
were bleeding and dying. They were simply swept 
along by a blind passion. lyord Byron could set to his 
rich music the heavy far off thunder of cannon as it min- 
gled with the "sound of revelry by night," he could ex- 
press the sudden pain of friends parting never again to 
meet, but he could not weave into his verse any moral 
end of truth or right that might make the battlefield 
grander than all poetr}^, nobler than the dazzling room 
where "bright lamps shone o'er fair women and brave 
men." Victor Hugo could succeed Byron with a match- 
less prose and could for a hundred pages follow the leaders 
and troops from orchard to ravine and show us how the 
carnage moved from hedge out into the wheat field and 
along the wagon roads of Nivelles and Grenappe and 
across a grave yard and among the cottages of Longmont, 
but those pages must close in death and gloom absolute, 
there being no divine logic to make a pillow for the dy- 
ing or an honored grave for the dead; but when the poet 
or historian touches those places we shall this week bedeck 
with flowers, the rhetoric becomes all aglow with the 
greater future of man, the wheat field is trampled down 
by patriots, the infantry advances, the cavalry dashes 
along, the cannons roar, the music sounds, the flags wave 
in the name of a universal liberty. When the battle 
opened men were slaves; when the battle closed they 
were free. 

The Sirens round the Boat of Ulysses. 

No man ever surpassed John Stuart Mill in the de- 
partment of pure reason. His books remind one of 
those fields in Italy where it was fabled that some 



64 KCHOES 

earthly giants fought against heaven, and the upper 
deities rained stones down on the wicked men until all 
the terrestrial warriors had sunk ; and to this day no 
plow can pass through the field, so thick lie the masses 
of rock. Thus Mr. Mill flung reason's rocks down upon 
our half crazy world. But here the comparison ends, for 
his reason acted in perpetual kindness, and instead of 
crushing humanity it healed many hearts that were half 
broken. It is probable, could the whole truth be known, 
that this passing generation is so full of all kinds of 
allurements that the culture of reason is not so popular 
as it was a generation ago. In the rapid advance of 
wealth amusement has assumed enormous proportions ; 
the appetites have increased in number and in power ; 
man}^ new pleasures have been invented ; literature has 
become not solid, but delightful ; novels are the books 
which sell best. The philosophic life has been displaced 
by the gay life, or the vague, dreamy life. If these 
appearances are real they form a dark cloud over the 
heads of our young men, for this philosophy, this reason 
is a friend which no generation and an individual has 
ever slighted with impunity. When his soldiers feared 
that Ulysses would forget reason and listen to the sirens, 
they tied him fast to the shipmast until the vessel had 
sailed beyond the islands of blind passion. But those 
sirens sang around the boat of Ulysses for only a few 
hours, but here they sing around our youth for more 
than twenty years. If in all that time they once part 
company with reason their ship is wrecked. Reason if< 
no beautiful thing which we may admire or dislike as 
we may choose. It is not a song which you may heat 
or sing, or leave unsung. Reason is man's breath ; it 
is his soul ; his heart. He must possess it or die. 



DAVID SWINO. 65 

Flowers in the Name of a New Greatness. 

This week flowers will be flung^ down not only in 
memory of the dead but in the name of a new greatness. 
Memory and Hope will g;o hand in hand to these abodes 
of silence. Tears and gladness will mingle — tears be- 
cause the soldier sleeps, gladness because a new moral 
greatness lives. When recentl}^ a woman's convention 
was held in our East the South was there in a new 
mental enthusiasm and mental beauty. The intellectual 
power of old and new England is spreading Southward 
and the land once adorned only with orange blossoms 
and fair skies and beautiful faces is to receive from this 
dav onward the blessed decorations of the intellect and 
the soul. 

On the Quick Marcli. 

The men who are occupying Presbyterian pulpits and 
who are holding the newer interpretation of old terms 
may well feel that their great body of preachers is mov- 
ing with quick step when one thinks of the usual gait of 
new ideas. No school of thinkers ever moved forward 
more rapidly than the Presbyterian Church has moved 
in thirty years. It has left behind a wonderful amount 
of false teaching. If that church now taught its old 
dogma of eternal pain for all save the few elect, or if it 
taught that negro bondage were divine those dissenting 
ought to be impatient because such teachings are not 
only false, but they are immoral, and should not be 
suffered to poison the world's air, but the new views 
about the Bible and as to the nature of inspiration are 
not inwoven with the idea of perdition for infants and 
bondage for the negro. The orthodox idea of creation 
and of Noah's ark is perhaps false, but it is not disgrace- 
ful. To overthrow that old idea the preachers need not 



66 ECHOES 

run. The new thought ma}^ advance leisurely. There 
is no harm in the idea that it once rained forty days and 
forty nights, and that the mountains were covered by the 
great rise of the streams. 

What is "Breadth?" 

In our day, whoever speaks of "breadth" and "new 
truth" as related to the church ought to define his terms. 
The "breadth" that must be patient is not that wide hu- 
manity that loves and helps all the race and that rejoices 
in all that high morality that makes a noble self and a 
noble societ5^ An atheist ma}^ possess this "breadth," 
and may thus possess a jewel for mind and heart. The 
Christian breadth is a quality of that mind which is 
toiling inside of the terms. "Jesus" and "God." It is 
such a widening of thought as asks man onlj^ to imitate 
the man of Nazareth and be a worshiper of God. The 
Liberalists who convened in this city recently did not 
make religion an essential part of their doctrine or their 
sentiment. Their "breadth" is that of the up-right life 
— an end great beyond estimate. The Christian 
"breadth" differs from that of the Liberalists only in 
asking the heart to be a follower of Jesus and a worship- 
er of the Infinite. Happy nation should both these forms 
of "breadth" traverse all the rivers, and lakes, and fields 
and leave no home untouched by one of these two gospels 
of moral beautj^! Happy the soul that, unable to care 
for an altar of worship, shall deeply love and perfectly 
obey the sublime ethics of the universe 1 

Times Have Changed Since the Year 1208. 

Many of the most thoughtless and fiery of the Protes- 
tants do not seem to know that "times change and that 
all in them is changed." They repeat the bloody w^ords 



DAVID SWING. 67 

"Waldenses" and "Albigenses" as though the Catholics 
had assailed those sects last spring or last summer. 
That persecution took place about 1208, almost seven 
hundred years ago. It ought to be confessed that the 
Roman Church has made some moral progress since 
that date. That church was then just emerging from 
the dark ages; and if its monks and priests had helped 
create that long night they must have the credit of help- 
ing dispel afterward the thick mass of darkness. The 
great Dante and his companions came 300 years before 
Martin Luther. Chaucer, who laid the foundations of 
the English literature, was a Catholic. So Petrarch was 
laying the stones of a new Italy before Protestantism was 
born. 

I/Uther a Fragment. 

As the expansion of classic thought and the growth of 
university life made Luther and Melanchthon, so these 
influences brought into being and into action a wonderful 
group of new-school Catholics. The new learning that 
ended the dark ages and laid the basis of Protestantism 
went far and wide and called into life and stored away in 
history such giants as Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdalone, 
Fenelon and Mme. Guion. All these eminent literary 
names were crowned by the same hands as those that 
crowned Luther and Calvin. These two ran out of the 
church to speak and act ; Bossuet and Fenelon remained 
inside the old temple. Bossuet and Massillon declaimed 
in the style of Demosthenes, Fenelon wrote in the style 
of the Odyssey, of Homer. The middle ages were far 
away. The scenery around St. Augustine was faded 
from sight. In the Roman Church and out of it the land- 
scape was all new. Cardinal Ximenes, of Spain, came 
near being a forerunner of Luther, thus showing us that 



68 ECHOES 

Luther was a fragment thrown off by a revolving wheel. 
There has been little violence in Christianity since the 
close of the seventeenth centurj-. Bloody spots may be 
found indeed, but after the great French group of preach- 
ers had passed by, Romanism never returned to the rack 
and the stake. Pascal had helped to destroy the Jesuits. 
The Inquisition had been abolished. Even Louis XIX. 
would not restore such a court of horrors. France cre- 
ated a new local Romanism, and the Catholic Church at 
large never lost the mental and moral impulse given it by 
the scholars and clergy of France. So rationalized had 
France become that it brought science to our age and re- 
inspired the whole literature of our race. 

True Greatness Comes Slowly. 

A new manhood and a new womanhood can come but 
slowly, because the soul in its long sleep has had a moun- 
tain heaped upon its bosom. It cannot waken quickly 
and spring up like a lark from the wet grass. It is like 
Knceladus, who lay with Mount ^tna on his heart. He 
must dissolve the great mountain slowly and scatter its 
ashes afar over Sicily and the sea. Thus all the old hu- 
manity lies under the awful mass of antiquity. The 
earth must tremble for long days before the imprisoned 
soul can go free. The new principles and the new priv- 
ileges are slowly creating a greater civilization. 

The True Source of a ''New :^ra." 

When man speaks of a new era he must use the words 
"make" and "create." A new era does not grow like 
a tree nor rise like a tide. Man can watch a tree from 
3^ear to year, or he can sit down and mark the rising tide, 
but a new era he must create. He must watch only so 
far as he works. This strange tide rolls in only at man's 



DAVID SWING. 69 

bidding. As a song will not sing itself, as a statue will 
not hew itself out of marble, so a new age will not come 
of its own will out of the places where our soldiers fell. 
This high tide will roll in from the human hearts that are 
here in life. 

Self-Denial. 

For many centuries the Christian estimate of man's 
life was inadequate. Solemnity was never a full justifi- 
cation of the human family. Solemnity is neither a 
virtue nor a vice. One cannot live for it. Weeping 
cannot possibly be a human goal. God would not create 
a world that it might weep. Nor is self-denial an ex- 
planation of rational life on this globe. We admire the 
self-denial of a poor mother who toils hard and eats and 
sleeps little that her children ma}^ the better live, but we 
all regret that that poor mother could not have enjoyed 
ten times as much sunshine as fell upon her heart. 

Christ was the man of sorrows, but not because self- 
denial is the reason of being. Times may become so 
dark and oppressive that the salvation of the many can 
come only through the sufferings of the few, but the 
universe was not made for the general display of dark 
and oppressive times. Self-denial is not, therefore, the 
ultimate ideal of man. Self-denial assumes the misfor- 
tunes of other people, but the other people must finally 
rise above those misfortunes, and thus end the empire of 
self-abnegation. Self-denial must follow us through in- 
fancy, but what is to be with us and stay with us after 
we have become men? Nothing, therefore, will explain 
the human race except the many-sided greatness and 
happiness of each individual. The former Christian 
times all came short of finding adequate aims of society. 
The three years of Jesus were not a perfect picture of 



^0 ECHOES 

human life. Thej^ were a sublime picture of man, as 
caught in a storm and as saving ship and crew, but in the 
uncounted 3-ears of that Son of God there is no crown of 
thorns. He wept for one night in a gloomy garden, but 
in the matchless sweep of his existence there are no 
tears. Thus we preceive that the existence of man is to 
be explained onl}' b}^ the greatness and completeness of 
his ideals. It is not enough for a man if he is a good 
judge of pictures, for it may be that he drinks twenty 
glasses of beer a day and pa3's the famil}" servant girl only 
$2 a week. The human ideals must grow more numerous 
and more adequate, that they may make a complete 
manhood and womanhood. 

" XJniversalism Giving Place to Christian." 

To this society time has brought a great change of 
scenery. I^ittle remains now of that eternal fire and 
torment that helped make Universalism so logical and 
welcome in its early years. The old orthodox churches 
have bartered awa}^ their fier}- perdition for the doctrine 
of such a fair form of punishment as may harmonize 
most with the character of the infinite God. It is not 
probable that orthodoxy claims that any punishment 
will be eternal. All wicked souls ma}^ at last emerge 
from the cloud, and take their place in the realm of 
light. Eternity has of late 3^ears become so long and 
so unknown that not man}- Christians remain who feel 
willing to make a declaration about a punishment that 
will go on forever. Nearh^ all Episcopalians and 
PresbA'terians, in thinking of future punishment, have in 
mind onh^ a vast sweep of years. Thej^ do not insist 
upon that eternal burning that was so w^elcome a thought 
in the times of our fathers. The word Uuiversalist has 
thus lost its import, the awful hell against which it 



DAVID SWING. 71 

raised its protest having passed away, and the love and 
equity of God having come. All things are ready now 
for the word Universalism to give place to the word 
Christian. It has been in favor of Universalism that 
it has not formally declared Christ to be only human. 
It has permitted its pulpit and people to believe in some 
divine mediation ; to believe in an incarnate love that 
made hell impossible in a God-formed universe. Of the 
unorthodox churches it has been the most simple- and 
the most attractive in theory, but as to numerical power 
it has suffered by the fact that Unitarianism preceded it 
in time, and caught in its gospel net a vast multitude 
that would have found a spiritual home in the latter 
creed. It was a beautiful Ruth, but in a field where 
others had gleaned. 

On Both Banks of the Ohio. 

Our soldiers' graves all lie on a dividing line between 
an old and a new era. That line which so long ran be- 
tween the North and the South, and that made the flowers 
of one bank of the Ohio grow for imperfect freemen, and 
those of the other bank grow for absolute slaves, has 
been blotted out. It was a line drawn by man's early 
folly, and by man's later tears it was erased. The monu- 
ment reared in memory of that old line is the tombs of 
our soldiers. At last, on both banks of the Ohio, the 
flowers are plucked by hands that wear no chain. Thus 
at these tombs begins a new era. All things are touched 
with a new light; all hearts beat with a new inspiration. 

I<et Us be Kind to Young Ideas- 

Our world is founded upon the cumulative plan. All 
good things keep adding interest to principal and soon 
a handful of gold becomes a fortune. In moral things 



72 ECHOES 

this is more true than in physical things. Wemusi 
stand by reforms in their early and weak days, because 
thus must begin the new ideas that are to overturn a 
despotism or regenerate a republic. It used to be 
taught us that the storks were so kind as to carry their 
young on their backs. The mother storks did this for a 
day because on the morrow the young would fly. Thus 
man must be kind to all young ideas. He must carry 
food to them and shelter them against the storm. To- 
morrow those ideas will rise in their strength and fly 
with their own wings. If you will refer back a half cen- 
tury you will then see how ideas have moved from mere 
existence up to active life. You will see the first effort 
of a woman to say something in public. You will see 
education passing from the few to the many. You will see 
a few tears falling for the slave. One heart in a thousand 
is touched with pity. You will see a hint somewhere 
about humanity to dumb animals. You will see some 
gentle protest against the cruel rod of the school- 
master. 

"All Days Cannot be Faif.'» 

' We all long to be perfectly happy, but as a Nation we 
must accept of a part of the sorrows of the human race, 
and along with England and the Netherlands and France, 
go down at times into the valley of humiliation. Not all 
paths can be flowery, not all days fair. The distresses of 
to-day are light compared with the awful bloodshed of 
the bygone years. The soldiers who died for this Nation 
will find their deeds and their graves all justified again 
in the near future. We need not lay our flowers upon 
the failures of this little season ; but rather upon the few 
great past years, and upon the noble future that will 
surely come, Qold may go away from us ; trade may 



DAVID SWING. 73 

fluctuate and almost fail ; ships may not or may carry 
foreign flags ; hungry men may march the streets in the 
name of some public injustice or of their own infinite 
folly, and yet under this distress our Nation may lie in a 
greatness such as mankind never saw. Even from all 
the painful facts that surround us, we must all emerge, 
carrying in our hands blossoms for the soldiers' graves. 
The blood of the Christian martyrs did not insure the 
Church against mistakes. After ail the noble disciples 
and apostles around Jesus had died for the simple gospel 
of their Master, the Church went into a long course of 
folly and crime, but yet lung afterward the martyrs' 
blood became the rich soil of new flowers. Those Chris- 
tian martyrs died to establish principles, and as the sun 
comes back after storms, so after each crime and folly of the 
Church back came tombs of the apostles and the memory 
of Christ. Thus the heroic lives of our soldiers did not 
make future folly impossible, but they made the Nation 
so thoughtful and great that it cannot easily sink under 
the misfortunes of a few years. Under the vice, crime 
and incapacity that now hold swa}^ in the cities and the 
Nation, there is lying a sublime example of patriotism 
which asks for lilies from full hands. Patriotism in the 
tomb has often fought against a living vice and ignor- 
ance. When the present loses all great speech, the dead 
often become eloquent. 

lyct Us Be Patient. 

We must not be depressed to despair over the short- 
comings of these passing years. The spots on the sun are 
thought to be caused by some vast volume of substance 
that has fallen into it, and has not yet become a part of its 
fire. Slowly the sun conquers the dark mass and com- 
pels the black spot of yesterday to go out in sunbeams 



74 ECHOES 

to-morrow. Thus in our Nation there is an infinite 
power that maj^ at last make the black spots of this 
hour become a part of some new day of outpoured light. 
All hearts that desire to create and enjoy a great Nation, 
possess in the United States a stored-up force that ma^^ be 
led hither and thither for man's happiness, as the Nile is 
led to ten thousand waiting gardens and waiting fields. 
All is ready for the touch of new will power and new 
genius. 

Music the Sister of Religion. 

Music is almost matchless in its power to awaken the 
slumbering feelings of the soul. It has no definite 
language. The same piece will carry new life to one and 
will seem like a dance of happ}^ spirits, and to another 
will come as in the pensiveness of a djdng hour, and will 
cause to come before us the faces of the loved dead, and 
will make one wish to be with the dead be3'ond the tomb 
in the grass. Music is an urn into which each heart 
empties its own self. But it is not alone in this. Reli- 
gion is its sister, onlj^ more gifted in mind and soul. 
Hence, into the words of St. John, into his graceful vases 
of language the heart of the humblest man may go and 
pour its own hopes and sorrows, and while yet upon the 
shores of earth in body ma}^' be carried away to paradise. 
The Apocalypse is only the solemn music of futurity 
sounding for us all. The words are indistinct, but we 
remember now that the most impressive music is written 
wholly without words. 

Neglected Children. 

There is something very touching in the condition of 
those children and youths whose parents have no educa- 
tion nor taste, and who, therefore, cannot open to there 
children an}^ gates except those of hard labor and rude 



DAVID SWING. 75 

usage and vice. There are millions of these in the 
Christian nations for whom there is no church, nor 
school, nor book, nor hand of elevated friendship. In 
all their early years, there is no one to point them to the 
beauties of nature and art, no one to teach them to read 
the pages of knowledge, no one to teach them a song of 
pathos and kindness, or any of the holier hymns of 
religion. 

Fallible Workmen. 

God would rather an imperfect man should teach di- 
vine lessons than that a few men should be made perfect 
by miracle. The Bible therefore takes its place in the 
arena of fallible workmen and bears some traces of 
having been made by beings who needed a part of the 
forgiveness and penitence which they have taught to 
mankind. 

The Times "Out of joint. »' 

Our intellectual advance is far more rapid than our 
moral advance, and we have thus found more evils than 
we can abate, can perceive mort sorrows than we are 
willing to cure. The drvelopment of the modern man 
and woman is intellectual more than spiritual, and this 
throws our age out of balance, or, as some express it, we 
have " times out of joint." When a carpenter finds his 
timber too short for the intended reach, or too narrow, 
when a harmony of timbers or beams or boards is impos- 
sible, all fail because being " out of joint." Thus our 

era is crippled by this inequality of material. The virtue 
of the age is too small for the brains of the age, and, as a 
result, we are all gathering up facts and forces more 
rapidly than we are gathering happiness or goodness, 
and might easily become, as was rhetorically said of 
Bacon, " greatest, wisest and meanest " of ages. 



76 ECHOES 

The Ratchet on the Wheel of Progress. 

When our continent passes before us m review, our 
sufferings to-day seem only a part of the long human 
calamit3\ If civilization is the gradual mitigation of a 
hard lot then we are not standing still. We are advanc 
ing, but the mind is such an infinite thing that it is capa- 
ble of an infinite foll3^ If we should kill one folly a 
year it would take us a century to become eminently 
respectable. The mind is a beautiful thing at last when 
finished, but it takes a Nation a long time to reach that 
finish. A small minorit}^ of persons can soon reach a 
terrestrial perfection, but he must possess great patience 
who would wait for the majoritj^ to catch up. Six 
hundred Kmersons or Whittiers would not steal a railway 
train that they might go and beg the Nation to be hon- 
orable; but the population of the countr}^ is 70,000,000, 
and at least one-half of these are below the Emerson stand- 
ard of light and conscience. But the enlightened crowd 
grows larger constantl3% just as art tends toward more 
and more of beauty. As societj^ advances, it treasures 
up its progress in the storehouse of law. In the world 
of machinery there is a part known b}^ the name of a 
ratchet. When a vast load is being lifted, or a car full of 
human life is being dragged up a steep incline, the sound 
of this iron arm is as delightful as music. It will hold 
the car firom falling or running back. When a hundred 
feet have been gained, the powerful arm holds the gain 
and lets the car pass on to a hundred and one, and two, 
and ten. Thus law is the ratchet upon the wheel of our 
progress. When we have risen to a good height this 
arm falls into a notch to hold us from falling back into 
the abyss. When man has risen this law holds his 
gain. 



DAVID SWING. 77 

A Sad Divorce. 

The sad divorce between thinking and doing. Thou- 
sands are sitting in the schools, other thousands are 
hidden away in silent rooms that they may acquire the 
art of uttering well good thoughts in prose or poetry, 
in oration or essay. Never before was our earth so cov- 
ered over with the rich drapery of learning and wisdom 
and romance. Even the sleeping literature of the old 
East has been translated into our language, and thus 
Asia and China and Persia speak over again the words 
that fell like manna many centuries ago. This June 
ti^onth cannot weave for the prairies a vestment of grass 
and flowers richer than that robe of high thought which 
the past has woven for the nineteenth century. 
" I/and-Owner " and "Brain-Owner." 

Along comes a lad with more brains than is enjoyed by 
his brother, and while one Beethoven proudly signs him- 
self ' Xand-owner, ' ' to keep the world from confioundng 
him with his poor musical brother, the brother signs 
himself "Brain-owner," and the balance is fully struck. 
Thus out of the strange laboratory of nature issue two 
tribes, "land-owners" and "brain-owners," and then a 
third tribe that are neither. Very busy is this earth, all 
the while dividing its children up into parcels, saying to 
some of them "Take beauty;" to others, "Take genius;" 
to others, "Take money and go your way;" and by 
divers paths, they all go away to the far country. In one 
of his poems. Dr. Holmes passes beyond the visible influ- 
ence of earth and finds a fatal hand reaching down out of 
the unseen and shaping destiny. 

From the same father's side. 
From the same mother's knee, 

One journeys toward a frozen tide, 
One to a peaceful sea. 



78 KCHOKS 

The Worship of Humanity. 

The days of the French revolution and the half century 
following showed that the worship of humanity could 
not lift the spirit upward as it was lifted by the harp of 
Isaiah, or by the prayers of Epictetus, or by the holy 
cross of our lyOrd. The songs of the Red Republicans 
were a poor spiritual food compared wnth Zion's songs, 
which broke the hearts of Judah's daughters in a strange 
land, or which echoed in the "misereres" and * 'glorias" 
of the seventeenth century. The worship of humanity 
became a worship of food, and drink, and pleasure; and 
handed over to a merciful oblivion those who turned 
away from Heaven's God to fling their offerings upon 
man's altar. The votaries of this new morals never 
soared up to eloquence. They failed to become Pauls, 
ready to die for virtue, they failed to imitate Savonarola 
as missionaries against vice, they found no French elo- 
quence on their lips such as had made kings penitent in 
the days of Bossuet and Massillon. Their religion lan- 
guished as a piety and expanded only as a despair. 
Coming to a lofty intellect like Augusc Comte, it only 
turned into a philosophic obscurity and sadness that 
became readily a poetry but never a salvation. 

Jesus Christ Greater Than All Sects. 

Above and beyond, and also through the churches, 
the spirit of Christ flies, like the angel that went to and 
fro over the heavens in St. John's vision. There is a 
spirit of brotherhood in Christ that even while the 
Church was holding slaves and was glorying in bondage, 
was upon the outside of the Church pleading for equality 
and liberty. When it could not touch the pulpit it 
touched a Wilberforce. When the communion table 
would not confess it, it spoke in music through Sumner 



DAVID SWING. 79 

and Stuart Mill. Jesus Christ has always been larger 
than any existing sect, or all sects, and as the sun shines 
upon the earth, and besides pours his flood around it and 
beyond it, touching other planets and emptying oceans 
of light into the great formless void, so Christ has 
blessed the Church so far as it would receive His gifts, 
and then has poured His love around it and beyond it, 
where the statesmen have sat in council without any 
creed or anj'^ prayer. 

I/et Our Politics be Intelligible. 

It is a common law of rhetoric that no great speech, no 
great essay, no great poem needs an expert interpreter. 
Its meaning comes only too rapidly to the heart. The 
reader or hearer has not time to keep back his tears. He 
•is smitten in an instant. He cries or laughs without the 
help of a trained nurse. So in our world of politics we 
want no vagueness in our pleadings, no Calvinistic in- 
comprehensibility in our crusades. One would as soon 
die for the philosophy of Hegel as for that of Henry 
George. If a hero must die for a philosophy it ought to 
be permitted him to understand it before dying. This 
permission would indeed subject nearly all martyrdom 
to a great postponement. It would be almost a gift of 
eternal j^outh. 

Success to the Civic Federation. 

May great success come to the Civic Federation, which 
is attempting to redeem this city from the grasp of those 
men in office and out of office, who, being Romanists, 
disgrace Rome's altar, or, being Protestants, disgrace all 
humanity! Nothing is so beautiful as the face of the 
Redeemer; but each man and woman who leads toward 
a higher life, is a redeemer of our race. Christ was a 
fountain of redemption, but humanity at large composes 



8o KCHOKS 

the great flood. Bach noble soul, each good book, each 
great picture, each piece of high music, is a redeemer, 
and when the soul, 3^oung or mature, has once started 
toward its salvation, then each field, each forest, becomes 
a page in its divine book, and each bird song a revival 
hymn, sweet as those of the old Methodists. 

We All Need Special Care. 

Bach class of mankind needs its own peculiar treat- 
ment. When a new form of human soul comes 
along, a new school-house, new politics, a new religion, 
must be made for this new soul. The laws of Persia 
w^ould not be obeyed by Americans. Our upper classes 
would not tend a Roman theater. Our soldiers would 
not go into battle as the Persians went, with a driver and 
a lash behind each squad. As fast as new men come, 
their surroundings must become new, just as Paul, when 
a child vSaw as a child and spoke as a child, but passing 
into manhood, he put away childish things. While a 
child, Paul saw the sky as a blue arch within a stone's 
throw of his hand, but when he became a man his mind 
pushed back the canopy and made it the far-off encamp- 
ment of God. Thus, as a class of men or a whole age 
moves forward, the scenery changes as around a flying 
train, and what was passes away. 

Man Born to Greatness as Well as Trouble. 

Must we see the path of eloquence all deserted ; the 
land empty of great men ; the pulpit weakened ; great 
politics abandoned ; the country half forgotten that our 
most ambitious hearts may keep the great books of large 
property ? We, indeed, should all wish our troubles to 
cease, but we all ought to wish that when prosperity 
shall come back it will bring wath it an uprising of the 
heart. The infinite wealth of this Nation must struggle 



DAVID SWING. 8 1 

onward toward an infinite richness of its humanity. Out 
of the old fact of human troubles, their abundance and 
bitterness, came the word Savior. All through the Old 
Testament the blessed term comes and goes. It passed 
over the two classic lands, and many a statue of marble 
or gold or ivory arose to the memory of some one who 
had come between man and a misfortune. But these 
monuments could only proclaim a happy day as past ; 
they could not make new happy days come. They were 
a beautiful memor}^, but not an ever-advancing phil- 
osophy. At the base of each monument back came the 
heart's griefs. Out of these incessant tears a new Savior 
was at last born. He is the Savior of to-day and to- 
morrow ; not a monument, but a life. Man was not only 
born to trouble, as the sparks to fly upward, but he was 
also born to greatness and joy, if only some Savior will 
beat down the wild thorns and let the lilies live. Joy 
loves to fly upward like sparks from the fire. When the 
moral Savior comes troubles pass away and human life 
grows triumphant. Through him the troubles of wealth 
would give place to a blessed benevolence ; the troubles 
of the State would be modified by the advent of honor in 
all the humble and great offices, and by a holier brother- 
hood among men ; the troubles of the drunkard would 
pass away at the bidding of the blameless life ; the 
troubles of sin would disappear in a full forgiveness and 
a new virtue ; the troubles of poverty would almost be 
destroyed by the divine simplicity of life, and even the 
trouble which death pours into the heart would be only a 
light cloud which the love of God would dissolve. Man 
is born to trouble, but the civilization which Jesus offers 
will command society to be born to ten thousand joys. 



82 ECHOES 

Bmilio Castelar. 

Kmilio Castelar is the Voltaire and the Cavour of 
Spain. He led that land to the borders of a republic, 
but it has swung part way back. In his chapter written 
on an evening on the Grand Canal in Venice, he gives 
his conversation with a priest. ''Very well," said the 
priest, "our age, then, does not believe in miracles?" 
" It is right," replied Castelar ; "its acquaintance with 
nature's laws has convinced it that these laws cannot for 
an instant be interrupted. We may enjoy all the beauti- 
ful things of religion, but the mind must look through 
them at last and rest upon science alone." Such was the 
man who for a time held Spain in his kind hand. 

Toiling in Vain. 

It is no pleasing outlook of life if, after one has given 
his days of work and sorrow to doctrines, these doctrines 
are all to perish, to be put aside as men throw away old 
raiment. Why should one toil and fight and even die for 
the pope, or for the conservation of slavery, or for the 
divine right of kings, if just after us are to come gener- 
ations who will build up a wide freedom without slave or 
pope or king upon the ruins of one's life and thought. 

The Unity of Thought and Morals. 

I see the unity of thought and of morals running 
through all animated nature. There is no difference of 
quality, but only of more and less. The animal who is 
wholly kept down in nature has no anxieties. By yield- 
ing, as he must do, to it, he is enlarged and reaches his 
highest point. The poor grub in the hole of a tree, by 
yielding itself to nature, goes blameless through its low 
part, and is rewarded at la.st, casts its filthy hull, expands 



DAVID SWING. 83 

into a beautiful form with rainbow wings, and makes a 
part of the summer day. The Greeks call it Psyche, a 
manifest emblem of the soul. 

Goodness and Perfection. 

In order to make these three-score years yield the 
most of positive pleasure and of peace, at least when 
positive happiness is wanting, the mind must realize the 
full meaning of the word " good," as distinguished from 
the word "perfect." Here you are looking for all 
kinds of perfection, when you ought to be thankful for 
anj'thing that is even down in the comparative degree of 
goodness. 

Hebrew and Christian Pictures of God. 

Among the ideas of earth that are most restless and 

most progressive and most infinite, let us confess the 

idea of God. As the first geographers made our earth 

so contemptible that a man or a turtle was an adequate 

foundation for its mass, so the first theologians saw God 

as only a hero, or a sleeping, dreaming Oriental king. 

Compared with the nations around, the God of the 

Hebrews marked a wonderful progress, and looking into 

the darkness around him, David truly sang his song, 

' * For our Lord is a great God , ' ' but even his picture 

v>as far below the reality, and the world hastened to 

fiove on. Christianity came, and gave the idea of the 

Heavenly Father a new and wonderful impulse. The 

actions once attributed to Deity were repudiated by 

Christ, and out of that New Testament era there came 

a new Creator, a new Father. An idea marched rapidly 

forward. 

Crumbling Thrones. 

All this crumbling of thrones which we behold in our 
day, this sinking of crowned heads to the level of the 



84 ECHOES 

multitude, has not come without a cause. The throues 
of earth were founded upon the deepest principles of 
selfishness. Millions of baj^onets have stood in frightful 
lines for the king's support. The history of the last 
hundred years has been the history of attempts to keep 
up the same old despotisms. But the equalit}^ of man- 
kind has, at the close of each battle in which kings have 
triumphed, come back to begin its secret abrasion of the 
flint}^ rock. Xo sooner have the kings exacted peace 
than the voice of human brotherhood has begun, like 
Abel's blood, to cr^^ up from the ground; and the kings, 
flushed on 3'esterday with victory, must begin at once to 
invent new arms and draft new mercenaries for a fiery 
conflict. 

A Fine Bar for Heart-Pulses. 

Sureh', surely the only true knowledge of our fellow- 
man is that which enables us to feel with him — which 
gi\^es us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating 
under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. 
Our subtlest analysis of schools and sects must miss the 
essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees, 
in all forms of human thought and work, the life and 
death-struggles of seperate human beings. 

The Rich, the Poor and the Children. 

We feel free to affirm that no one influence can an^^- 
where be pointed out that will equal the power that 
Christ has brought to bear upon the republican princi- 
ciples in society. The whole soul of His religion is 
broad. It is man — man, not rich or poor, not crowned, 
not chained, but man who figures in the great Christian 
drama of life and death. In the religion of Jesus the rich 
are humiliated if riches be their idol; in the same religion 



DAVID SWING. 85 

the poor are exalted if they are in the paths of righteous- 
ness. Here it was the widow with two mites outranked 
the Dives of purple and fine linen. Here it was the first 
began to be last and the last first. Those whom birth, 
or riches, or force, had set up in high places, began to 
sit uneasy on their pedestals of vanit}^ and slowly up 
rose Magdalen and all the penitents till forehead of king 
and forehead of subject found the level of kindred drops. 
In this transformation scene of the New Testament, 
children came to the front, and, for the first time on 
man's world, were made the equals of kings, orators, or 
philosophers. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. • 

Is Not All Thinking Perilous ? 

Of course, there is a line where liberalism fades away 
into unbelief. But all thinking is perilous. The search 
for evidence is dangerous, for it builds up a love of 
proof which at last religion maj^ fail to gratify. Liber- 
alism may seek for the unchanging until amid the 
enigmas of the world, it shall cry out : ''All is vanity," 
and confess no faith. But while the peril of the liberal 
spirit is great, the peril of the narrov/ spirit is vastly 
greater. For each soul marred or ruined by too much 
breadth, one can point to myriads rendered frightful by 
their assumption that the little ideas in their hands were 
the eternal wish of God. 

Action. 

Read the roll of earth's great from the present back, 
and it is not made up of only those wrote and spoke with 
elegance and genius and logic, but every alternate 
name is of some one who led the legions in the field of 
action. Poet must divide space with inventor, orator 
must find room for discoverer, dramatist must share 



86 KCHOKS 

marble with the philanthropist, until at last poetry is 
equaled by love, and admiration is divided between the 
genius and the hero. 

Vague, But Most Valuable. 

Religion, worship, pra3^er, is a deep feeling rolling 
over the heart, as a wave upon the shore. Hence, amid 
the indefinite ideas of Kzekiel and St. John, tHe intellect 
indeed does not see clearly, but the soul is borne along 
by its own consciousness of the grand and even the 
thrilling in religion. Mathematics alone speaks exact 
words. Poetry and prophecy come with a wonderful 
vagueness, but the human heart flies to them because it 
is not information it seeks, but a new light or shadow for 
the heart. No one may declare what Kzekiel saw in his 
vision of an advancing Providence moving upon wheels 
within wheels and with wings of cherubim, but toward the 
scene the human spirit turns and feels that somewhere in 
the great cloud of mystery is the being of God. 

The Industrious Millions. 

Our flag waves over millions w^ho are industrious, and 
thus they find the paths of honor and of happiness. 
Most of modern crime comes from the intemperate or the 
idle and indolent. Against the quick and utter ruin of 
the masses the popularity and rewards of industry are a 
perpetual barrier. 

Wanted I a Strong Government. 

We are in an interregnum when there is no govern- 
ment to punish crime and no powerful education to pre- 
vent the growth of criminals. Government, quick and 
unbending cannot be ever dispensed with. It must be as 
perpetual as society. Where crime is committed or 



DAVID SWING. 87 

threatened, there government must reveal itself. Our 
Republic is a state whtre power has ceased to flow from 
kings, and has not yet begun to flow from the people. 

The Heroes of the Bible. 

The heroes of the Bible make up such a group of 
pearls as never before in history were strung upon one 
string. Christianity is the only queen that ever wore 
such a collection of gems. But she wears them right 
along, and has thus been unapproachable for thousands 
of years. And she will remain matchless in the quality 
of soul that lay beneath her thought. It does not seem 
possible that earth can ever reproduce a St. Paul or a St. 
John. And now, when to these beings you have added 
just one more whom I need not so much as name, a 
being who emptied an ocean of love and hope upon the 
world, and who has transformed the earth, making it roll 
out of darkness into light, you will conclude that here 
in the Christian records might}?^ souls have passed in a 
strange vision before us Here are tremendous founda- 
tions, broad, deep, vast. And as though man might 
come some day in the vanity of the subsequent centuries 
and mock at the impulse or character of these men, they 
all died heroic deaths that the feeble critics of the nine- 
teenth century might feel their own littleness when they 
should behold the thrilling ending of these lives. Paul 
was put to death in Rome. John was tortured and sent 
to die an exile. James was hurled from a battlement in 
Jerusalem and crushed to death. Simon Zelotes was put 
to death in Persia, where also Jude was tortured to the 
death. Matthew was slain by a mob in Abyssinia. 
Thomas was killed in Coroinandel. Philip was hanged 
upon a pillar in Hierapolis. Andrew was crucified at 
Patraca, and James the I^ess in Asia. As for the one 



88 ECHOES 

Name towering above all, He was crucified on Mount 
Calvar}^ between two thieves. Into such hoi}- hearts did 
God pour the truths, the hopes, the joys and sorrows of 
our religion. 

Greatness of Spirit. 

The spirit of man must mean the great drift or current 
of his life. If he is said to have a great spirit, it must 
be that all the da3's and hours of his life, arising in the 
hidden recesses of the soul, among the unseen hills of its 
adamant or jasper, at once set forth upon a long journey 
toward the noon of love and light, that infinite gulf, 
sweeter than Mexican sea, murmuring in hj^mn and 
benediction as the flow. It is said that Fenelon revealed 
a lofty spirit. This is afiirmed of Chalmers. The w^orld 
says the same of Joan d'Arc. It thinks the same of 
L'Ouverture. Of such mighty souls the pages of history 
hold just enough to help us in the stud}- of this word 
"spirit." A^ histor}^ marches along it will meet with 
more of these noble children, and when at last the Son 
of Man shall come in his flnal glor}^ He will find all the 
children of earth standing before Him happy in a great- 
ness of spirit. 

The Dawn of Brotherhood. 

When Chrisr lived His sublime life, and passed by the 
purple robes of a Pilate and a Herod, and loved such 
characters as John and Luke; when He passed b}- those 
might}'- in violence and gave His hand to those beautiful 
in soul, the world began to become a brotherhood of 
which the soul was to be the only essential element, the 
condition of full membership. 



DAVID SWING. 89 

Changes in the Path of Progress. 

Any one looking at Christianity will perceive that it 
moves forward amid two sets of facts ; that the facts of 
one class are changeable as the clouds upon the sky ; 
that the facts of the other class are permanent as the 
deep blue back of the clouds. It is known to all the 
lovers of nature that the clouds never repeat their forms 
in the West. Never twice does the setting sun give the 
admiringworld the same picture. Thus, in Christianity, 
no two eras arrange alike the religious details. The 
revivals, the service, the sermons, the prayers, the 
hymns, the music, the ceremonies, change like the 
toilet of the worshipers. More than this, doctrines 
change, and out of a hundred ideas that enter an age, 
only a tenth will come forth meaning what they meant, 
or retaining the love the}^ enjoyed when they passed into 
the gates of the epoch. Ideas rush into a centur-/ much 
like the " charge of the six hundred." Beautiful is 
their equipment, bright their armor, nodding and white 
their plumes ; but after the thunder ot battle has passed 
by, how few are the warrior truths that remain ! The 
field is covered with the dead. 

Idleness Fatal to a State. 

Occupation does more for morals and happiness than 
can be accomplished by laws and police, and if our gov- 
ernment cannot execute well its laws, it has built up an 
industry which is bringing sobriety and happiness to 
many. If liberty and idleness had come together to 
found this republic, it would be either dead now or would 
be in death's final struggle. For nothing can be more 
rapidly fatal to a state than bad officials and an idle pop- 
ulace. 



90 ECHOES 

The Vastness of the Universe. 

The vastness of the universe renders foolish the suppo- 
sition that this little planet is the only inhabited one; and 
the unity of laws and of substances asks us to imagine 
the beings upon other spheres to be moving to and fro in 
the likeness of man, speaking a language and busied by 
the useful and the beautiful. We may even assume that 
such is the oneness of intelligent life that if these inhabi- 
tants of different planets were to meet in some general 
home in immortality, they would prove to be of one 
race, — a human race having different minor details of 
histor}^, but all members of one brotherhood, and capable 
of one friendship, one virtue, one taste, one piety, — ten 
thousand worlds full of one music, one art, one tender- 
ness, one virtue, one creature, — man, — one God. 

Modern Revivalists and Hebrew Prophets. 

This group of Hebrews differed from the modern 
evangelists in this, that the evangelists have their e3^es 
fixed upon heaven, while the Hebrews toiled for the hap- 
piness and greatness of their nation. The difference be- 
tween a modern revivalist and a Hebrew prophet is the 
difference between Whitfield and Edmund Burke. Both 
those men were religious, and each pursued a great path, 
but the paths were not one and the same. Whitfield's 
heart was full of all that is beyond the grave ; Mr. 
Burke's heart was busy with all that is noble on this 
side. The revivalist sa5^s, ' * perhaps you will die to- 
night ; ' ' the Hebrew prophets said, ' ' periiaps you will 
be here to-morrow. Your vices will harm your children 
to the third and fourth generation." If any one broke 
the Hebrew command about graven images God's wrath 
would follow that offender, not into eternity but in his 



DAVID SWING. 91 

family on earth for three generations. If children hon- 
ored their parents their days in this world would be 
long. Long would such children wander in the hills and 
fields of Judea. The revivalist sings : 

** Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, 

Yet how insensible ! 
A moment's time, a point in space 
Removes me to the heavenly place, 
Or shuts me up in hell." 

In the sad hours of the prophets their tears gushed 
out of the thought that the King of Kings would "cut 
off their horses, would destroy their chariots, would 
cut down their cities and throw down all their strong- 
holds ; they should sow but not reap, press out the olive 
oil but not use it, grow vines but not gather the grapes. 
Their heaven was to be the splendor of Jerusalem, their 
hell was found in that day when enemies should beat 
down her gates. Both utterances are great — that of the 
modern Christian and that of the old Hebrew — but one 
is the greatness of death, its suddenness and mystery ; 
the other is the greatness which is w^rapped up in the 
destiny of an educated and happy people Cardinal New- 
man was great in his hymn which closes with the words: 

" And in the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile." 

but so was the last sentence of the Hebrew Malachi, 
"that unless fathers and children were faithful to their 
God he would smite their land with a curse." The mod- 
ern mind was thinking about the human soul in its last 
last hour, the ancient was dreaming about a blessed or 
ruined country. 



92 ECHOES 

Good Out of Na^^areth. 

The proverb that no good could come out of Nazareth, 
once met with a wonderful rebuke. Out of a land so 
unpromising came a Christ. Out of the Roman Church, 
notwithstanding the dark stains upon its character, there 
have in all the old centuries shone forth at times rays of 
beautiful light, as when the sun gleams out from among 
the clouds. From that Church came Fenelon, Massillon 
Guj^on, names that would not by comparison disgrace the 
holiest ones of the human race. And particularly in this 
land, from the Gulf to the Canadas, have the holy fathers 
trodden when other hearts quailed before the dangers and 
the depressing solitudes of this once desolate world. The 
Indians of the Canadas differ to-day from the blood- 
thirsty, brutal Sioux, because, led by the Catholic 
priests, the Northern tribes, before 3^ou and I were born, 
learned to look at the crucifix and bow in pra3^er. Out 
of the old Catholic Church came Xavier. Rich in gold, 
but richer still in spirit, high b}^ titles of rank, but 
higher still b}^ that manhood which Christ confers, 
nothing offered him happiness but the wide .search for 

souls. 

The Hindoo's Countless Gods. 

It is evident that when the Creator formed man he 
placed within him a religious sentiment, a sense of a 
superior existence, and this being the nature of the sub- 
jective mind, the outer realm became at once peopled 
with supernatural creatures. As the fever-stricken 
dream of fountains of water, so the religious nature of 
man dreams of gods. In its ignorant age it sees deity in 
wood or stone, and sees hundreds or thousands of them. 
The modern Hindoo says he believes in three hundred 
millions of gods. This confession is valuable, for it shows 
the inner religious sentiment looking out of the mind. 



DAVID SWING. ■ 93 

Woman an Eccentric Character. 

The conventiDn of woman's clubs awakens thoughts of 
that day, not far off, when here and there a woman dared 
publish some words in favor of a wider liberty and arena 
for her race. When a woman spoke in the name of her 
cause, her audience was small and otherwise insignificant. 
A few persons of some standing tip-toed their way into a 
back seat and then took pains to explain that they were 
present in the name of a passing curiosity. With a great 
scholarly snicker they would explain next day to the 
village parson that they went last night to hear that 
woman speak; went just for fun; but heard some things 
that were not so bad after all. To which confessions the 
parson would say kindly: "She is an eccentric character, 
very fond of notoriety, wants to see her name in the 
newspaper." And having uttered such profound words, 
the preacher would hurry on to the village printing office 
to hand in his theme of discourse for the next Sunday. 

No Need to I^ay in Firearms. 

In the presence of the slight disturbances, now existing 
between Protestants and Catholics, a discord which has 
induced some of these church people to lay in a store of 
firearms as though a civil war were about to begin, it 
must be remembered that the same Nation and century 
that are making new Calvinists and new Methodists, are 
making new Catholics. Nothing could persuade our era 
to reconstruct a Presb)^terian and pass by the children of 
the Pope. We might as well ask our Roman Archbishop 
if any snow fell not long since around his cathedral. It 
was banked up ten feet high against all the Protestant 
walls. Were the Catholics omitted by that Monday 
drift? Thus when education, kindness, and Christian 



94 * ECHOKS 

fellowship, and all charity come by what form of logic 
do we conclude that the children of Rome catch no part 
of this outpoured good ? Inasmuch as many millions of 
that host come from the povert}^ and injustice of the old 
despotisms they may not be as sensitive as the native 
Americans to the touch of the new dispensation, but the 
new air and new sunshine cannot overlook these living 
hearts. So rapid and great is the pressure of a new world 
upon all the minds wdthin its confines, that a few years 
ago, when our country fought against dismemberment, 
thousands of Catholics hastened to fight and die for her 
flag. Some of these men had not been here many j^ears, 
but the spirit of the Republic had crept over them. 
Quite a number of our officers had from childhood said 
their prayers at the Catholic shrine. 

Jeremiah's Tears. 

Many thoughts might arise over this fact — the unvary- 
ing theocracy of old empires — but it is lesson enough for 
the hour to remember that Isaiah, and Daniel, and John 
of the wilderness were not simple religionists, they were 
the ordinary statesmen of the people. Isaiah, Daniel and 
all the great Hebrews had in mind a righteous and 
blessed national life. The}^ were not revivalists in the 
recent sense of that term ; the}^ w^ere reformers more after 
the likeness of the recent Penns, and Cobdens, and 
Brights, with only this difference, the Hebrews were 
statesmen in a nation where God was king. Those 
statesmen w^ere all religious statesmen. The Jere- 
miahs were created by national vices, just as our 
Wilberforce was created by slavery, and our Henry 
Bergh by the age's inhumanity towards brutes. Open 
Jeremiah at random, and he is seen crying ofit : " Oh, 
that my head were a fountain of tears, that I might weep 



DAVID SWING. 95 

day and night for the slain of my people ! Oh, that 
I might find in the wilderness a lodging place for 
wanderers, that I might leave my people and go from 
them, for they are all false, an assembly of treacherous 
men. They bend their tounge as their bow for falsehood. 
They have grown strong, but not foi the truth. They 
go from evil to evil. Every one is watching his neigh- 
bor. No brother trusts brother. Every neighbor will 
go about wdth his slanders, the}^ have taught their 
tongue to speak lies ^ -Ji^ -a< ^ ^ Woe 
unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, 
his chambers b}^ injustice, that useth his neighbor's 
labor without wages, giving him not his hire ; that saith : 
I will build me a wide house with large chambers, I will 
line it with cedar and paint it with vermillion. Shalt 
thou reign because thou mayest excel in cedar ? Did not 
thy father do judgment and justice? Then was it well 
with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy. 
But thine eyes turn toward oppression, blood and all 
violence. At last no one shall call the brother ; no one 
shall lament thee ; thou shall be drawn and cast forth 
beyond the gates of Jerusalem and shalt receive the 
burial of a dead ass.' " Thus Jeremiah muttered and 
thundered, raved and wept over the sins which were 
sinking into misery and infamy the nation so many noble 
men had deeply loved. He was necessarily a mind of 
great purity and susceptibility and could not but turn 
into a lamentation the dishonesty and weakness of the 
time. 

The Name ''United States" 2 New Name. 

A nation, like an individual, has its hours of ill health, 
days when the heart fears that it may be on the border of 
death. But only as centuries can make a great nation 



96 ECHOES 

live, so nothing but long illness can make it die. Many 

of our early years were lived under the name of England. 

Then was wrought out our language, then our literature 

was written. The name United States is only a new 

name. It is no measure of our lifetime. Our principles 

are all venerable. The troubles of to-day are not great 

enough to threaten the life of the State. What enormous. 

calamities are liable to settle down upon the career of a 

State. Think of England from the times of King John 

to the eighteenth centur\- — almost five hundred A-ears oi 

battle. Think of the Netherlands. And then to these 

troubles of nations add all the bloody tumults of France. 

Compared with these pages of histor\' our Republic is 

enjoying a profound peace. Indeed it is wonderful that 

our country- has been able to extract so much of sunshine 

firom a sky which in former ages was so prolific of dark 

storms. 

Industry and l/ove. 

The mart^TS, the inventors, the missionaries from Paul 
to Xavier, the mighty men that have shaken the world 
and then made it come to their tombs to weep, have all 
woven their imperishable wreaths from the laws oi 
industry' and love, and faith and hope which they loved 
and fulfilled, and not from the criminal laws which they 
did not violate. If not to kill, not to steal, not to wor- 
ship an idol, made great men, the road thitherward 
would be easy. Xot here amid these criminal statutes 
can you and I find, therefore, the path to the best exist- 
ence. We must obey them easilj* and always, and then 
seek new worlds to conquer. 

The Ever Rolling Web of Life. 

The educated class demand a modification of the 
popular religion to this extent, that it must be made to 



DAVID SWING. 97 

meet the wants of this life. As men progress in educa- 
tion and thought, earth with all its interests becomes 
larger instead of smaller. The "ever unrolling web of 
life" expanding out into j^outh, manhood, womanhood, 
into homes by the hillside, into cities by the lake and 
sea, into continents, into vast literatures and arts, grows 
more wonderful as the human mind gathers power to 
grasp the great spectacle. Had we all ten times the 
power to perceive the greatness of our world, we should 
weep to-day over the sublimity of this great wave of 
human life. To us so far away from the planet Jupiter, 
it twinkles only as a large dew-drop But could we be 
carried to within a few miles of its shores, we should be 
filled with amazement at the gigantic world into which 
that twinkling star 'would expand. Perhaps to our eye 
would come the vision of fields. 

Where everlasting Spring abides, 
And never fading flowers, 

and to our ear would come, as to the Italian poet in 
paradise, "the rolling melody of bird-song." 

God Dismissed from Human Thought. 

It would be an alarming experiment if the King of 
Kings were to be dismissed from the minds of the people 
of this country, for the notion of such an infinite being 
is the ideal by which society measures not only its duties, 
but also its greatness and its hopes. The deity is the 
storehouse in which humanity treasures up its best 
thoughts. The storehouse can never become full, for 
however wise and kind society m^-y become, the name of 
God opens to receive all the human conceptions of good. 
This God has always beckoned man on and on. Whether 
Moses looked, or Daniel, or Isaiah, or Plato, or Paul 



gS ECHOES 

lifted the eye to heaven, each saw a Being far be3^ond the 
knowledge or goodness of self. Wonderful treasurer of 
our world. He casts away our dross and retains all our 
gold! His angels bear man up lest he dash his foot 
against a stone. Cities have fallen. Their ruins adorn 
and solemnize the old East. The temples have fallen 
where the Jewish and Greek statesmen began their 
speeches with praj-er, but the God they all worshiped, 
gathered up all their moral beauties and bore them 
onward toward the Christian period without loss. 

De Troquemada. 

Thomas DeToquemada performed his cruel exploits 
about 1480. He put to death eight thousand heretics 
and banished from Spain eight hundred thousand Jews; 
but after his day England and America stole from Africa 
a million negroes and w^orked them b}^ force and gave 
them no pa}^ for their labor. The massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew came in 1572. The O'Neil rebellion wrought 
its great slaughter of Protestants in 1641. Thus the 
terrible exploits of the Romanists lie wholly in the far 
past, and if the Protestants have been made new^ in these 
later days, it cannot but be true that some new humanity 
and new morals have come to the church of Rome. 

The Usefullness of To-day. 

Eet me remind you that the great outside world needs 
your benevolence and religion now. In twenty years 
the countless children and the countless poor of this city 
and the land will have passed beyond the valley of 
blessing. There is a multitude which no one can bless 
but 3^ou, and 3^ou can do that service only now. The 
good that shall come a score of 3^ears hence will come to 
a different throng. Those that now swarm around you 



DAVID SWING. 99 

will have passed away, uneducated, uncheered, unloved. 
Some poetess, sitting in a lonely room and reading about 
the tears of love and pity that had fallen over some 
orphan's grave, wrote a touching rebuke in the poem, 
'%ove me before I die." 

Watching and Fighting. 

. The inhabitants of the earthquake lands pass many 
an hour of tremulous apprehehsion. The earth seems 
about to become false under foot. The sea seems about 
to rise in a tidal wave. When some heavy sound comes 
in the night strong men rise from their pillow to watch 
and listen. Thus the Jewish race watched and trembled 
and fought. Between revolts and invasions the years of 
peace were few. The wealth of Jerusalem made it a 
grand prize in a world where soldiers were only organized 
banditti. Against it all armies flung their forces all 
along from Shishak of Egypt to Cypress of Persia. 
" The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold." 
The Chaldeans plundered and burned the temple. War, 
civil or defensive, came in successive waves for a thous- 
and years, but these were not years enough to exhaust 
the patriotism or the power of the statesmen. They 
arose again and again in their majestic, divine politics, 
and as often lifted up the people by offering them the 
picture of a potentate angry or a potentate pleased, the 
picture of a country ruined or a Jerusalem the joy and 
beauty of the whole world. 

Andoniram Judson. 

The name of Judson may serve to illustrate the same 
spirit bursting forth from the Protestant world ; but with 
this difference of scene, that at last the beauty and 
impressiveness of any one star is lost in the grandeur of 



lOO ECHOES 

a whole heaven bestudded in all its blue. Judson led in 
the mighty works of this century, a kind of morning 
star running before its great sunshine. For about forty 
years he toiled for his fellowmen, and repeated in the 
the nineteenth centur}^ what Paul had done in the first, 
and Xavier in the sixteenth. It is all one story — love, 
labor, suffering, and heroic death. If j^ou will study 
these three lives until your heart can see these three 
heroes going forth each day to their toil, you will have 
in your possession something that will keep ever before 
you the the sublime attributes of man, and wdll make 
you feel that perhaps humanity was made in the image 
of God. 

Religion Fighting Vice Only. 

Perhaps the religious world wronged all us children 
when we were young by leaving us to feel that God had 
passed for us only laws against vice. We know not 
where to lay the blame. But this we know, that God 
hovered around all these laws of sin, and when we 
stood away from them we seemed to stand away from 
any commandments which came from the Creator. All 
other truths of the world seemed only the ideas of 
philosophy or science. The holy voice of Heaven did 
not seem to sound through them. 

New School Presbyterianism. 

Much was said some years ago about a new school of 
Presbyterians, but the papers and the pulpits forgot to 
allude to any new school of carpenters, and a new school 
of farmers and blacksmiths. The age that affects the 
preacher affects the painter and sculptor. The Presby- 
terians hastened to adopt the word "new," but without 
adopting any additional adjective, the Methodists be- 



DAVID SWING. lOI 

came as new as the Calvanists, and the Baptists became 
as new as the Methodists. 

Newness. 

* ' Newness ' ' is not a voluntary virtue. Man does not 
go and order it as he orders a new suit. He goes about 
his daily task, and the new robe comes to him. The 
century weaves the fabric, and fits it to the unsuspecting 
mortal ; and all he knows is that whereas he was an old 
school carpenter, or blacksmith, or preacher, now he is 
"new school," all fresh and shining. I,ike Cinderella, 
men little know how they exchange ashes for silk. 

Old and Immortal. 

It is bad indeed to be negligent as to the world far 
back of us, but it is worse to permit the mind to add 
prejudice to common neglect, and to go to such an 
extreme as to dislike a Moses, an Isaiah, a Paul, or an 
Apollos. No mind has any right to contain a prejudice. 
A prejudice is an intellectual infirmity. It is a confes- 
sion that one does not desire to act reasonably. It is like 
taking refuge behind a law passed for the protection of 
minors. Paul, the Apostle John the Baptist, Moses, 
Isaiah and Daniel, ought to stand up before us in all the 
attractiveness of the Xenophons and Ciceros, unless we 
can find some good reason for looking upon the Hebrew 
group with less esteem. All were alike the children of 
our world and our race; and all were alike impressive in 
their day, and for reasons essentially the same. They 
all pursued the same means to the same ends. It was 
this one fact, this unity of purpose and conduct, that 
made all those old names immortal. If Homer wrote 
poetry, so did the author of the book of Job; if Socrates 
taught the young men a higher life, so did Daniel, so 



I02 ECHOES 

John, the Apostle. Many names are thus all in one in 
the strange brotherhood of pursuit. The soul was one 
whether it spoke in Hebrew, or Greek, or I^atin. The 
teachings of Jesus have reached society in perhaps fifty 
languages, but this change of words has never affected 
the ideas. It is not known in what language the great 
moral lessons were first spoken. Thus language is insig- 
nsficant compared with the ideas it contains. We are 
bound, therefore, to feel that although the great names 
of antiquity come to us by way of many languages, the 
minds are all one. The names stand for a family of 
brothers, who are not separated by mountain or sea or 
speech. 

Cultivate Your Reason. 

To cultivate reason is one of the highest duties, be- 
cause then her wise orders are issued to all the other 
impulses of the soul, and a varied world passes from 
chaos into harmony. Is there anything then in which 
we can trust nature alone ? Are there any hours that 
are independent of this reason ? It appears not. But 
there are hours into which it has not been the world's 
custom to bring reason into play. There are hours in 
which we all act as so many little children, and know no 
law but nature. Among these hours are those of hope 
and fond anticipation. To-morrow is loaded down with 
the things we intend to do and to have. There is no 
faculty of the soul so overworked as this faculty of ex- 
pectation. If all shall come out of the future which we 
are all pouring into it, we shall have a marvelous world 
before long. The tame, sad facts of these days will soon 
give place to islands of milk and honey, and to palaces 
of Aladdin. 



DAVID SWING. 103 

Christ as a Fact. 

Above all other super-huinan ones He stands farthest 
from myth, and nearest to reality. Mark, then, the 
superiority of Christ as a fact. The Christian poet can 
not say, with the classic, ' ' All I know of thee, is thy 
name, ' ' and they that erect an altar to him can not write 
over it, to ' ' the unknown God. ' ' The reality of Jesus 
is as definite, as undeniable, as the reality of Wash- 
ington or Franklin. All the other incarnations belong 
to the atmosphere of legand. No twelve disciples 
gathered daily around the feet of Olympian Jove, or of 
the beautiful Apollo, nor of the gifted Minerva. No 
multitude gathered upon the mountain-side to hear and 
see the Hercules and Aphrodite. If some crowd, acting 
in the historic period, in the days of language and 
words, had followed the Apollo along the streets of 
Jerusalem or Athens, and had even crucified him, then 
would the Christian Gospel confess a rivel in the pagen 
pages. But it was the misfortune of all that Olympian 
group that there was no Judas to betray any one of them 
with a kiss, and no Pilate to order any one of them to 
the cross. They all lived outside the bounds of evi- 
dence, and hence to-day appear only like the picture of 
the virtues or the graces, outward expressions of the 
inner soul. 

A Beautiful Heaven and a Beautiful America. 

It does not affect the duty of the pulpit that it has 
added immortality to the earth. It must still like 
Daniel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, make its country the subject 
of perpetual work and affection. It is well known that the 
Jews assumed a future life and lived and died on its 
alluring borders. If Jesus brought this second life into 
the visible foreground of speech and motion he only thus 



104 ECHOES 

compelled his ministers to be the statesmen of two 
countries instead of one. To save a citizen from drunken- 
ness and to save a soul from hell are acts in one and the 
same philosophy. A beautiful heaven and a beautiful 
America are one and the same dream. The clergyman 
must therefore be a statesman for the lands on both sides 
of death's river. When man believes in a Supreme 
Potentate then his nation reaches from the cradle of a 
poor infant to an archangel's crown. 

•'God the only Potentate." 

The phrase used by St. Paul, * ' God, the only Poten- 
tate, the King of Kings," casts light upon quite a long 
roll of past writers and orators, and sets them before us 
not as religious fanatics, but as the true statesmen of the 
early empires. All the old nations were founded upon 
God as the Chief King. To this custom there was no 
exception in remote times. The God or the gods pre- 
sided in all national affairs. Even the Greek State, 
although the most rationalized of all the old govern- 
ments, put to death its greatest philosopher because he 
was leading the youth away from the old grasp of gov- 
erning deities. Plato was as religious as Isaiah. Xeno- 
phon wrote a treatise on theology. Demosthenes opened 
his greatest oration with a beautiful prayer, and closed it 
with an appeal to the only Potentate — the King of all 
Kings. Israel did not want a theocracy. It simply fell 
in with the existing world, and differed from Egypt and 
the surrounding tribes only in possessing a better con- 
ception of the heavenly potentate. The temple of Solo- 
mon is dear to us because our religion came out of it 
as our rivers come out of our mountains, but we must 
not permit our temple to conceal those sanctuaries whose 
columns stand along the Nile, or in such beauty at 



t)AVID SWING. 105 

Athens, or which crumble in Rome or number a thousand 
columns ia the ruins of Palmyra, or amaze the modern 
traveler by the ruins at Baalbec. The Parthenon, which 
cost six millions of our dollars in those cheap times, was 
a temple to the Deity, the columns of which, sixty feet 
high, stand at Baalbec, were sacred to heaven ; they were 
all in place and in beauty in the times of Solomon, while 
Abraham himself may have stood and gazed at the 
mighty religious structure at Heliopolis. 

Paul, Xavier, Judson. 

O, loftiest spirit of earth, the soul of Paul, or a Xavier, 
or a Judson ! What want there may seem of beauty 
comes from our inability to rise high enough in our 
feelings to see and measure this grandeur. It is said that 
men throw their offerings down at the feet of the gods 
because the human eye is unable to see and the human 
arm too short to enable the worshiper to place his garlands 
upon the forehead of Deity. With similar weakness and 
humility we all, of a mercenary and infidel age, being 
unable to see and reach the divine forehead of this 
missionary spirit, that loftiest shape of soul, can not do 
otherwise than come to-day and whisper our words of 
homage at her feet. The ancients saw in their sacred 
vales and woods three graces, and at times, in poetic 
moments, nine muses ; but this single grace, the spirit of 
love, this wandering virtue of missions, surpasses all the 
old fabled ones of history. 

The IfSitge Part of I^ife Should Come First. 

But suppose life to run a long, and death to be far away; 
what man most needs is that the large part of his life 
should come first, that all the subsequent years may be 
lifted up and held up by the strong arms of the past. It 



I06 ECHOKS 

is melancholy to have the soul realize the greatness of 
earth when it is just leaving it forever. 

Religion Faithlul to the Ages. 

Here upon earth God is sitting upon a throne of ages, 
and by our deeds done here we weave for ourselves the 
chaplets of immortality. Hence, man demands a reli- 
gion that shall be full of faithfulness to these years, a 
religion which utters to earth the poet's words with high 
adaption: 

"Oh, grand world, being about to die we salute thee." 
Morituri Salutamus, 

' 'Ye halls in whose seclusion and repose, 
Phantoms of fame like exhalations rose 
And vanished, we who are about to die 
Salute you ; earth, and air, and sea, and sky, 
And the imperial sun that scatters down 
His sovereign splendor upon grove and town." 

Thus, must the Christianity of our day refit itself to 
the new era. It can count no longer upon a childhood 
that loves forms nor upon a public ignorance that drinks 
in all doctrines. It should not remain neglectful of the 
fact that there is rising up a class powerful in education 
and in reason and in virtue, a class that does not fill our 
jails, but that makes our laws, that sits upon the judge's 
bench, that shapes our literature and molds our social 
life. 

How Men Have I^oved War ! 

It is when some great lesson is unveiled, the bearers of 
the new principle must hasten to make the people see its 
beauty. Take the idea of peace among nations. The 
human race has been attached to war. No Calvinist 
ever loved the doctrine of eternal fire as ardently as the 



DAVID SWING. 107 

world has loved war. Machiavelli said that "war ought 
to be the only study of a Prince; that peace should be 
only a resting spell in which men should get ready for 
war." Other statesmen of his day said: "War is man's 
essential nature. ' ' It will be difiicult to beat down and 
destroy such a bloody sentiment. But difficult as the 
task may be, it can be accomplished. Peace can so shine 
through all literature, all eloquence, all religion, and all 
art that at last the human mind will travel over from war 
to peace, and will bless all those who taught it to sing 
the sweeter song. But it will take more than a half cen- 
tury for mankind to make this exchange of sentiments. 

** Beyond the Wall of Our Own I^ife We See I^ittle." 

Bach person is so much at home in his own time and 
place that all the world away from himself seems only a 
great failure. When not thought of as a failure, all 
remote times are passed by as not having really existed. 
Man's consciousness is at work in the present. Each of 
us knows all about the little spot bounded by our twenty, 
or forty or sixty years. Beyond the wall of our own 
life we see but little. There is so much to be seen 
within our own time that we have little leisure for 
looking over the stream which separates the present 
from the past. And had we the leisure for studying the 
past, the hearts do not care about it. The heart being 
unable to love two objects, it greatly prefers the nine- 
teenth century to the tenth, and nestles close up to 
America and slights Rome. When some one visits us 
from Sweden or Russia, we pity him because he lives so 
far off. We indeed find the real only round our own 
feet. All things grow shadowy as they spring up away 
from our sight and touch. We all hear and accept many 
allegations about the near and far past, but they seem 



loS ECHOES 

more like pictures in a gallery than like events in actual 
experience. When we see the picture of Mary Queen 
of Scots, our sensations end in the picture. It is a 
dream. We do not see the young girl, Mary Stuart, 
passing along through her eighth and tenth years, fond 
of nature, fond of her books, talkative, playing' with her 
young companions. All is enveloped in a cloud. The 
dimness increases as the distance in time increases, and 
when the name of Paul is pronounced it does not recall 
even a picture of a vanished face. Little realism comes 
from the name. The name is little else than a sound. 
The heart declines to have much to do with objects that 
are so far off. This dimness of the past is not all the 
inevitable result of human nature, but it is in part a 
result of personal choice. Many persons refuse to study 
history, and refuse to make real what they do study ; 
and thus by their own act the past is moved millions of 
years awa}^ when in truth it might be only over the 
garden wall. The nearness of India, Rome, Greece to 
us depends largely upon our wish. If we close our 
hearts against them, of course they cannot come to us. 
There is a large army of past heroes and worthies who 
would gladly come to our homes were they only in- 
vited. Friendship must be cultivated . not only with 
the living, but also with the dead. 

The Rights of Dumb Brutes. 
Thus the new ideas about the rights of dumb brutes, 
the rights of children, the rights of the heathen myriads, 
must be repeated and repeated until they shall become a 
mode of modern thought. As men can learn a new 
language until at last they think in it and dream in it, 
and speak it as unconsciously as they breathe, so an age 
can gradually move into a doctrine of benevolence which 



iDAVID SWING. 109 

shall be with it always, and reach out toward all the 
forms of life. Men and women will be kindness incar- 
nate because they will not know anything else than love 
and equity. Few persons can remember when certain 
principles and emotions came to their own hearts. How 
can one find the day and the hour when the truth was 
coming for years? As the cultivated mind loves the 
springtime more at forty that it does at twenty; and loves 
music more in life's close than in life's morning, so the 
great truths of church and state and duty and happiness 
spend many years, in getting fully into the soul. In 
youth, kindness is intermittent, in middle life it becomes 
perennial. 

i^acli Age Bows to Philosophy. 

Not a generation has lived upon earth which has not, 
after having tried all the paths of action, bowed at last 
to the philosophy that it is the steady light of noble 
ideas that makes life pass in blessedness and in peace. 
Home, industry, education, friends, honor, and religion, 
are the ministering angels that alone are worthy to wait 
upon the human soul. In their arms they shall bear 
you up. 

Guns for One means Guns for All. 

Much as it is regretted that the Catholic Church does 
not indorse and make use of the public schools and 
thank God for a republic that compels the taxes of the 
rich to give a common education to all the children, 
even those of the classes the most poor, yet we must all 
be in judgment the most just and must not assume that 
to oppose our school system is any proof that the days of 
blood and torture are to return. In these days religious 
opinions do not mean guns. Once they did, but that was 
long ago ; and in those times, when opinions meant guns 



no ECHOES 

and swords, they had that import among the Protestants. 
The shadow of the sword fell on all churches alike. As 
no church could escape the dominant ideas of the earlier 
time, so no church can escape the happier philosophy of 
the present period. Guns for one means guns for all ; 
and now toleration for one means toleration for all" 
Those societies that are now arming themselves must be 
composed of Protestants and Catholics of the humblest 
mental equipment. It is full time for the higher and 
calmer classes to speak out in favor of peace. It would 
be a disgrace to our country should a single Catholic or 
Protestant be slain in the name of any church of Jesus 
Christ. Under the influence of our schools, literature, 
and freedom, fanaticisms ought to disapper from religion 
and permit its large place to be occupied by charity and 
pity. 

Science full of Cruelty. 

A material age asks us to study the strata in the ground 
and the stars in the sky; asks us to find the shores of old 
lakes and the craters of extinct volcanoes; asks us to 
gather the bones of fossil birds and fish, and store up a 
cabinet of shells, out of which some worms died a million 
years ago; but it heeds little the men that have sailed all 
stormy seas to carry love and light to their fellow pil- 
grims in this vale. Science is often full of cruelty. It 
studies the little things of the universe, counts the birds 
and the trees, measures the footprints of the great mam- 
mals that beat around in the forests that afterward made 
our coal, weighs the fossil tusks and teeth of extinct 
mastodons, but looks coldly toward the ship that carried 
St. Paul about, and toward the block where the blood 
was drawn from his heart. To science the bark canoe 
and the stone tomahawk of the savage are things greater 



DAVID SWING. Ill 

and more charming than the pleading at Mars Hill or the 
movements of the apostles. 

Xavier, Duff, Judson. 

There is one kind of flesh of man, another flesh of 
beasts, another of birds; and so there is one glory of the 
3un, and another glory of the moon. In the realm of 
ideas, there is a glory on all sides, a beautiful, captivating 
glory; but the glory of the birds and the fishes is one, and 
the glory of a Xavier, or a Duff", or a Judson, is another. 
Dear to us all, both as a study and as an inspiration, 
should be the lives of men who helped Christianity and 
all our civilization when it lay helpless in the midst of 
savages. When the storm may have occurred that 
changed the old ocean into prairies, or which transformed 
forests into beds of coal, is a question interesting indeed, 
but not so vital, so sublime, as the study of that awful 
tempest of destruction and creation that gave us Christ 
and His ardent followers. The penitence of Magdalen, 
the self-denial of the poor widow, the kindness of St. 
John, are stories that have affected the human race 
more than it has been affected by botany, chemistry, and 
astronomy. As of all things upon earth, the sonl is the 
greatest, as ''there is nothing great in the world but man, 
and nothing great in man but his soul." 

The Right to I/iberty. 

The oldest of us remember when a man who urged for 
the freedom of the slaves was only a babbler. He did 
not know about what he was talking, for all nations had 
held slaves ; even St. Paul had advised slaves to be 
obedient to their masters ; and the Creator himself had 
made an inferior race that it might do the drudgery for a 
higher order of beings. Thus planted in the midst of 



112 ECHOES 

associations, religious, political and social, the American 
public was impervious to the onsets of any new idea 
about the onenCvSS of the white and black races and the 
rights of all human minds to liberty. It would seem 
that the right to liberty ought to have been self-evident 
to a Greek or Roman or Christian age, but the daily 
associations of society have always been a Chinese wall 
to keep in what was in and to keep out all outside philo- 
sophy. To wear away this wall and permit the old to 
die and the new to flourish is the task often of centuries. 
It is always the work of much time. 

The Moral Quality of the War of the Rebellion. 

Our Decoration Day is ennobled by the moral quality 
of the war. There is in our poor humanity a desire to 
applaud a victor. In the Spanish bull fights the victors 
are applauded. And in the old gladiatorial shows the 
man was applauded when he stood over a slain anta- 
gonist. It was never inquired which man ought to have 
fallen. But as the mind grows it does not wish to fling 
away its applause upon either of two gladiators. It 
pities both, and would gladly disarm both and send each 
to his home, where 

Were his young barbarians all at play, 
and where ''their Dacian mother," war, is no longer a 
delightful spectacle for enlightened minds. A fresh 
battlefield is the most revolting scene upon earth. It is 
wonderful that a Julius Csesar or a Napoleon could look 
upon his murdered soldiers and not die of remorse over 
suffering and death so aimless. 

We I/earn by Sight. 

As a child learns language first through the eye, by 
seeing the object represented by the word, and, indeed, 



DAVID SWING. 113 

as language itself began in the names of things that had 
length, breadth, and thickness, so Christianity passes 
through its materialized period with the individual or 
the age, and then swells out into spirituality, as the man 
or the time changes its need. 

What is a Statesman ? 

What is a statesman ? What is an artist ? One who 
can know and produce the highest beauty. What is a 
goldsmith ? One who can work with exquisite touch in 
gold. What is a statesman ? One who can discover and 
toil for the highest welfare for the people of the State. 
He is the artist of the nation. His eye is quick to mark 
what is noblest and his hand is swift to reach after it, his 
tongue eloquent to utter it. Ernest Renan says: **A 
saint is one who consecrates his life to a grand concep- 
tion and who thinks all else useless. ' ' Biit this is a 
universal definition. Take away the word saint and in- 
sert the word statesman and the truth gleams forth that 
he is a public mind which consecrates itself to a grand 
conception of a nation and scorns all humbler thoughts. 
What an alarming definition! It excludes a great multi- 
tude of politicians. Their conception of vice, crime, right, 
wrong, all duty, all goodness is so low that society dare 
not place upon their temples the statesman's crown. 
Their minds are too small to devise good things ; their 
hearts are too insincere to be eloquent. 

Whittier Wept I/ike Jeremiah. 

It is seldom the fall of a nation is so complete as to 
leave no personal exception. As when recently two 
steamers struck in the British sea, from the one which 
sunk instantly only one man arose. That one was 
saved, while no other hand or face ever appeared again, 



114 ECHOES 

SO when a nation is sinking in depravity there is always 
some heart which rises above the gulf to sing over and 
over the song of integrity and its rewards. When the 
Roman Catholic public had lost all semblance of virtue, 
Savonarola suddenly appeared. He came as a poor 
monk. Diminutive, ugl}^ awkward, and laughed at by 
the brazen sinners of the time, he made up in intellectual 
thunderings all he lacked in beauty. Thus each sink- 
ing ship sends upward some one heart to live and beat. 
While the South of our land was almost wholly wedded 
slavery in the far off days, some master in Carolina 
would go north with all his slaves, and set them all free 
and give them land in some free State. When nearly all 
literary men were silent about slavery Whittier wept like 
Jeremiah. In 1833 or 1834 his tears for the slave be- 
gan to fall. Thus the Hebrew prophets were those 
exceptional souls which were too divine to sink. They 
were the Cowpers and Whittiers of old Judea. They 
were not itinerant musicians nor revivalists, but rather 
the statesmen who were not willing to see their nation 
fall a victim to frauds and crimes. 

The Greek Race. 

Through all of the thousand years before the opening 
of our era, the most intellectual race that has perhaps 
ever lived, had built up the Greek language. As the 
coral rocks arose in the Southern ocean, from great 
depths up to the sunlight, so the Greek language, from 
depths unknown, unsounded, arose until it came to the 
great upper sunlight of the poets and orators. Of all the 
marvels of history the Greek nation is the most wonder- 
ful. The seven wonders of the world are insignificant 
compared with that nation that occupied the little penin- 
sula. Something great was poured into the Greek soul 



DAVID SWING. 115 

when it came from its Creator. It did nothing upon any 
humble scale. Its first song by Homer will equal all the 
songs that will follow it. A nation so many-sided, and 
so wonderful upon each side, came never before nor else- 
where; wonderful in politics, in philosophy, in poetry, 
in art, in heroism, and in physical beauty and develop- 
ment. All this greatness was treasured up in language, 
the image, as one of the Greeks said, of the soul. 

Christianity Flexible in Mode. 

Since, then, Christianity must be flexible in its method 
and doctrine, we all err perhaps in overlooking the upper, 
educated class, and in devoting our whole time to the 
effort to fit religion to the great democratic populace. 
The genius of our country turns the attention of public- 
ists (and the preacher, too, is a publicist) toward what is 
called the masses. The uprising of charity as a virtue 
makes us seek out the object of that great love. It has 
come to pass that we weep over nothing but a ragged 
orphan or a slave. The pulpit upbraids the rich, and 
defies the educated, and ridicules the scientific, and fran- 
tically declares for the outcast, the ignorant, the chimney- 
sweep and the news-boy. 

The Divine Summer Time of the People. 

May no citizen limit his deeds and sentiments by the 
Constitution of our Nation. That great document simply 
defines the few tasks of a central power. Does the Con- 
stitution say anything to us about art or literature, or 
love or beauty, or summer or spring? Are the autumn 
leaves there? Does it contain any laughter or tears? If 
it excludes religion then may its ice all melt in the divine 
summertime of the people. 



Il6 ECHOES 

Ideals in Art. 

Our age is moved deeply by the study of ideals in art. 
Each generation is amazed at its own progress. In the 
great Field Columbian Museum one can see the history 
of many an idea ; the boat idea; beginning at three logs 
bound together with a piece of bark and passing on 
towards the ocean palace ; the transportation idea, begin- 
ning with a strap on a man's forehead, passing on 
through the panniers on a goat or a donkey and reaching 
to the modern express train ; the sculpture idea, moving 
from some stone or earthen or wooden outlines onward 
toward the angelic forms that seem about to live and 
speak. There you will see the wooden eagle that 
marked the grave of some Indian. And what a creature 
it is ! Nothing but the infinite kindness of civilization 
could persuade us to call it a bird of any known species. 
And yet perha'ps the Indian when dying was happy that 
such a wooden bird was to stand on his grave and keep 
his memory green. Into our age so full of new and 
grand conceptions in art there must come the marching 
ideals of human life. Man is moving through a redemp- 
tive world. All lips should sing each day the song of 
the old harpist, "Who Redeemeth Thy lyife from 
Destruction." What our age needs is a rapid advance of 
the ideals of life. A Catholic priest who has spent 
thirty years in the temperance cause said ' ' the saloon is 
the greatest enemy that Rome has left in the world : that 
the criticisms we Protestants make of Rome's dogmas 
were harmless compared with the ruin of mind and soul 
wrought by the saloon and its defenders." No one will 
deny the truth of the priest's complaint, and all are glad 
to mark the new effort of the Romanists to set up new 
ideas. Protestants should not, cannot, hate a Catholic ; 



DAVID SWING. 117 

but all good citizens must cherish little regard for any 
one who has not yet got ten beyond the saloon idea. 

Seneca and George Fox. 

Seneca was to the Roman Empire what George Fox 
was to England, or what Franklin was to the colonies. 
Seneca taught the highest precepts of his day, and be- 
cause he was such a moralist he was appointed tutor of 
the young Nero. The pupil betra^^ed the weakness of 
his guide. When Nero came to power, his guardian, Sen- 
eca, became the low flatterer of the king, and smiled at all 
the royal vices. He even went further and suggested to 
Nero the murder of a younger brother ; and when Nero 
murdered his mother, Seneca wrote a letter to sanction 
and explain the crime. Add to these enormities the fact 
that Seneca had himself been banished for a crime that 
did not happen to please the powers over him, and you 
have a picture of Roman morals as seen even in the 
best of Roman men. Seneca himself confesses that he 
was a lover of virtue, but not virtuous ; not a philoso- 
pher, but a student of philosophy. ''I am occupied with 
the study of the vices, but all I require of myself is, not 
to be equal to the be^t, but only to be better than the bad." 

Why We I^ove the Violets. 

In India there are vast valleys devoted wholly to the 
growth of roses. Twenty thousand blossoms will make 
an ounce of rose attar. Worthy fields, but who loves to 
think of a great planet made by an almighty hand for 
the purpose of raising reasons for not living an honest or 
humane life. The earth cannot be reconciled to God by 
finely spun apologies, but only by its use of absolute 
and eternal goodness. This fact has led some great 
thinkers to argue that the true mind need not be moved 



Il8 ECHOKS 

by either heaven or hell, but by the attractions of the 
right in its own pure self. The mind should be right 
and loving, because only thus can it be a true mind. 
We love a springtime day not because of heaven or hell, 
but because of its own exquisite contents. Thus man 
should love the right and the benevolent because they 
are beautiful and because he is man. You do not 
love the spring violets because of some hope or fear, but 
because they and you were made for such a friendship 
whether life be for a few days or for a million years. 
Thus talk many of the noblest of earth, but such a theory 
is rendered at least unnecessary by the simple fact that 
rewards will come whether they are a motive or not. 
They who seek the absolute goodness cannot escape 
happiness; their character makes it. 

Pagan Gods Only Dreams. 

None of the great classic or Asiatic writters pretend to 
have seen the great super-human ideas in whose name 
they worshiped. Venus, Juno, Jupiter, Prometheus, 
Osis, Osiris, were only long-continued dreams of the 
generations. They were like the toy-bringing god of 
our Christmas, only the incarnation of the world's wish 
and infant thought. Once the world was peopled by only 
a race of infants. As our children believe in the Christ- 
mas god, the ancients believed in the group upon 
Olympus gathered about an ambrosial feast. 

What Does This Babbler Say ? 

Many of the ideas which are offered to us are false 
and ought never to be entertained, but when true ones 
come along, if they are new, they will come ver}^ slowly 
into the inmost chambers of the mind. The heart feels 
disposed to cry out : ' ' What does this babbler say ? 



t)AVIt) SWING. 119 

He seems to have some new gods." Our life is so well 
intrenched in truth that whoever contradicts us is 
simply a babbler. He comes with a lot of new gods just* 
as though we could get new gods as we get clothing or 
new sandals ! Away with such a fellow from the earth ! 
And yet time softens the heart and takes away all this 
self-conceit. Men die leaning upon the bosom of the 
teacher whom once they would have crucified. Whom 
they once crucified all the world now admires and many 
love. The stranger has become well known. Time 
has transformed strangeness into friendship. Familiar 
with his face the world embraces now the one whom 
Trojan and Pliny could not endure. He is a stranger 
no longer. He is a member of the vast modern family ; 
an old-time friend. 

Christ the Revelation of a New God, 
Slowly, indeed, comes the redemption of the human 
race, but, notwithstanding this painful halting, looking 
back we behold Christ to be the turning point in the 
history of our earth. He was the revelation of a new 
God ; the One who proves to be the true God, the only 
Lord and Father of us all. He was the revelation of a 
morals that makes the sages of old hang their heads in 
humility. He did not, like Seneca, teach virtue with- 
out being viruous, nor was he content by being worse 
than the best, but better than the worst. All compro- 
mising, all comparative goodness, terminated at Naza- 
reth. A sinful thought became a stain upon the soul, 
and the enmity that said, "Thou fool," became a con- 
fessed ruin or sorrow in that heart. 

"Blue'^ and "Gray." 

Our Decoratiori Day does not come with the shout that 
once shook the Roman colosseum because some one had 



I20 ECHOES 

triumphed and some one had died ; but it comes with a 
gladness that in all parts or the great Republic false 
principles perished and new love and new right came 
for millions of persons and for a long vista of years. We 
do not bring our flowers to celebrate simply a deed in 
which a Grant triumphed and a L,ee fell, but we come to 
bless the soldiers that helped liberty to touch all door-sills, 
the soldiers that helped Georgia and Mississippi to be- 
come the loving friends of New York and Illinois ; we 
come to bless the soldiers that baptised the scattered 
States into one freedom and one love. The entire na- 
tion esteems the names of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. 
This May Day comes with pity for all the dead and liv- 
ing soldiers ; but with an inexeprssible joy that from 
these battlefields came the divinest principles for which 
men can live their years in this world. The words 
''friend" and ''foe," ^ 'North" and "South," "Blue" and 
"Gray" are drowned out by the voice of the millions 
welcoming a full liberty and justice. Time has furled 
the flags, thirty years have silenced the guns and have 
silenced the passions that once flamed in all hearts ; thirty 
years have taken away all boasting over fallen foes ; but 
the same flight of time makes only the more glorious 
the country that has no dividing line and the nation 
that has no slave. Time silences discord and exalts 
principles. 

God's Mercy Slow. 

The works of religion, as indeed all the works of hu- 
man progress, reach out like the formation of the glaciers 
or the deltas, over long periods. It saddens the human 
heart and bafiles the intellect to think of the slowness of 
God's mercy toward his children. 



DAVID SWING. 121 

The Old Gods are Dumb. 

The Roman religion crumbled rapidly. Porphyry, 
who wrote almost a score of books to stay the progress 
of Christianity, complained bitterly that under the sound 
of the Gospel the old gods had become dumb. This 
lament of a disappointed pagan, Milton elaborated into 
verse : 

The oracles are dumb ; 
Nor voice nor hideous hum, 
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
No longer can divine. 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving 

No trance or breathed spell 
Inspire the pale-eyed priest from his prophetic cell. 

The lonely mountains o'er 

And the resounding shore, 
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament ; 

From haunted spring and dale, 

Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent ; 

With flower-inwoven tresses torn, 

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket 
murn. 

The Future hss no Potency. 

When, after an absence of twenty years, you visit the 
old homestead and find the old orchard gone, and the old 
house dismanteled, its door-side moss-covered, you say, 
hastily, "What changes time has wrought!" But it 
was the agencies acting in time, the daily storms, the 
frosts, the winds, the worm, that slowly transformed the 
old home into decay. Thus the Future has no potency. 



122 ECHOKS 

The present is working all sad changes, and the future is 
only the point at which the heart must break. When 
hope cheers the present, and acts as an inspiration to its 
toil and goodness, then hope is a good angel; but the 
moment hope acts as an opiate upon the present, it 
becomes a poison of the soul. Rather than worship 
her, one would better deify the present and .come each 
morning with new homage. "Now," is an idea that 
should be more deeply studied by those capable of any 
usefulness. The money-makers alone have fathomed its 
depths. They alone "never put off till to-morrow what 
can be done to-day. ' ' But the moralists, and religionists, 
and possible benefactors, have not studied enough the 
little word. All the good ideas of earth, even the invita- 
tions of Jesus Christ, are postponed, and postponed until 
these great ' 'hopes deferred make the public heart sick. ' ' 

From Darkness to I/ight. 

At the touch of this new Savior, the principles of law 
underwent great change, and slowly passed from dark- 
ness to light. Christ was especially a great crisis in the 
history of the soul. The body became the casket, the 
soul the gem. The soul being thus thrown forward, its 
home had to be enlarged, and its career extended. 

The Impressionist School of Art. 

We do not yet know whether the style of the impres- 
sionist is to be some great truth in the art of the painter, 
or is to be only one of the many forms of delineating 
nature. Man has pictures in black and white; pictures 
in steel; pictures in many tints like those of Raphael and 
Meissonier. When the impressionist comes with only 
two or three colors, and with certain views of back- 
ground, and a central meaning, it may be he comes with 



DAVID SWING. 123 

some simple addition to the painter's kingdom, but not 
in the name of any new age. That was a new era that 
expelled all fiends and all horrors from the canvas and 
depicted for us all the blessed faces of humanity and all 
the rich scenery of nature. Old art loved to paint St. 
Sebastian with his bosom full of arrows, but the new era 
passes by such subjects and would rather draw a land- 
scape, or pin blossoms on a human heart. Thus a new 
age differs from a new thought. The thought may be 
only a suggestion, while a new age is the march of great 
principles. 

The Sermon on the Mount was Needed. 

Into what an empire did the son of man come ! There 
was a vast state, that represented the world, to be 
reformed ; there was a marvelous language to be the 
vehicle of the new truth ; there was the decay the Roman 
religous faith ; there was a decadence of political and 
aesthetic forms of thought ; there was a mental vitality 
remaining for new guidance ; there was a condition of 
morals that demanded the Sermon on the Mount ; there 
was a dark night setting in that appealed loudly for the 
mercy of Heaven. Two nations, the greatest that had 
come from the mind of man — the Greek that dazzles the 
world yet with the memory of its poetry and art, and 
philosophy and oratory ; the Roman with its law, and 
military skill, and ambition, and with its unrivaled 
temples atid palaces — had been merged into one, and 
with all their combined riches of mind and soul were 
descending to ruin together. 

The Age Treats us all Alike. 

That great king which we call * ' The Age ' ' treats 
us all alike. As the sunshine and the rain fall on 



124 ECHOES 

the just and the unjust, so the age moves along in a great 
breadth and overlooks nothing. It has no contempt for 
the little and no fear of the great. It pauses at the shop 
of the carpenter and at the library of the statesman, and 
says to both these workmen : ' ' You would better intro- 
duce some new material and some new tools." 

Benevolence Should Not be Delayed. 

There are colleges about this city that have been 
waiting twenty 3'ears for the good intentions of rich men 
to ripen. There are many forms of public beneficence 
that have been reposing in manascript for a quarter of a 
century, waiting for the future to evolve for them a 
reality from the generous and promising heart. But the 
real truth is, there is nothing in the morrow that was 
not in the yesterda}^, and one by one these designing, 
promising hearts, have fallen asleep without having 
come up to the golden days when benevolence would be 
a pleasure and money would no longer enslave the soul. 

Woman Fifty Years Ago. 

Fifty years ago she came as a babbler. We can look 
back and can say : She was a babbler, but only because 
we did not know eloquence when we heard it. In those 
days the majority of us thought that eloquence was the 
voice of a white man who was running for Congress. 
We had no idea that it could be contained in the dialect 
of a negro or in the soft" tones of a woman. All these 
old follies are djdng. We are on the margin of a period 
when the terms man and woman will be dispaced b}^ the 
word "humanity." Woman's Building was once a 
slave pen. It afterwards became a tinseled parlor. It 
will be seen every year in greater proportions, A hun- 



DAVID SWING. 125 

dred years hence it will not be designated as Woman's 
Building ; it will be called the Temple of Humanity. It 
will contain the human race. 

Religion a Science of Generalities. 

lyittle of the world's religious turmoil arose around 
Christ. But from the human mind, full of darkness and 
vanity — a sad combination — rolled the smoke and fire, as 
from an infernal Vesuvius, that have buried in ashes 
and death cities and homes which under Christ alone 
would have been Edens of happiness. Above all things 
religion is a science of generalities. It lies broad and 
deep like the expanse of heaven, and like the same 
heaven, will utter few particulars. Astronomers tell us 
Saturn lies within beautiful rings, and that Jupiter has 
equal day and night, and that one season runs through 
all its year ; but here these wise men pause. Whether 
beings like men dwell there, and gather wild flowers, 
and hear bird songs in eternal spring, and whether they 
sail ships upon oceans that know no wild storm, they 
are all silent as those awful depths. Religion surpasses 
even astronomy in the breadth and vagueness of its 
generalizations. The theologians, misconceiving its 
genius, have loaded it down with particulars from 
which it will now take them all their remaining life to 
retract. 

Give Generously! Give Now. 

It would not be beyond the truth were I to say that 
there are a thousand persons in this city who intend to 
bless mankind by acts of benevolence. When a little 
more gold has been gathered, and a few more gray hairs 
have come, and the dear future shall have come a little 
nearer, they are going to found asylums, and art-galleries, 



126 ECHOES 

and libraries, and colleges, and bursting the chains of 
self, love the large suffering world. These intentions are 
the most solemn and noble of their hearts. Nearly every 
clergyman has conversed with these good men, and can 
bear witness to their sincerity. These are good people 
at heart. But we come, now, to the defect in their 
scheme — a defect that hides itself, and, like Satan, will 
deceive the ver^- elect. The calamity of these well wish- 
ing hearts, and the calamit}* of the long-waiting public is 
simply this, that there is no such future an}- where as 
that one pictured in the dream of these benevolent men. 
The day when they shall feel that the}' have heaped up 
enough of gold ; the day when they will be willing to 
part with it ; the day when the}- will love the poor com- 
munity, and will desire to lay down great offerings at its 
feet, and when the future so long dreamed of will come 
down in golden colors out of the sk}-, will never come. 

Heroism the Beauty of the Soul. 

Heroism is indeed the beautiful in the sonl. It is the 
old image of God coming to the surface again as 
when in scraping off a ding}- wall in Florence the 
workmen came upon the portrait of Dante. Often 
there come men who throw aside the rags of self, 
the tattered vestments of beggars, and let out the 
image of God within. Into no institution of man, 
into no philosophy, into no school of art, has there 
entered such a band of heroes, as is seen filing down into 
this book of God. It seems perfectly wonderful that 
each page of the Christian's book should have been com- 
posed by one of these children of heroism. The Bible is 
a Westminster Abbey, where none but the great sleep. 
There are two painful exceptions, David and Solomon. 



DAVID SWING. 127 

These are the only two characters of the sacred group that 
pass before us destitute of any beauty that need long 
detain us. David and Solomon are mighty ruins lyin^ 
in the midst of the Bible. In them self was greater than 
society. Either one of them would rather overthrow all 
the laws of man than confess that self must have bound- 
aries of passion or ambition. 

I^uther a Result of the Classic Universities. 

It was the progress of the Catholics that made Protes- 
tantism possible. Luther was a result of the classic uni- 
versities Romanism had founded. In the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries a great reaction set in against the litera- 
ture composed of the miraculous experiences of monks and 
holy women, and, called back by the new voices, the classic 
style of thought began to return. While lyUther was 
giving this new awakening, a religious direction in Italy 
the classic movement was simply intellectual and aesthetic. 
When Pope Paul III. made a visit in 1543 to the old uni- 
versity of Ferrara, he was treated to a play from Terrence 
— a comedy called "The Brothers." He also found there 
a young woman lecturing upon Cicero. The religion of 
the university had become a pure Deism. The classics 
had become so popular that they excluded the church and 
amounted to almost a passion. Luther was only a result 
of the new Catholics. If the Catholics were affected by 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they can be affected 
by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not 
with them a matter of choice; it is a matter of destiny. 

The World When Christ Appeared. 

The " golden age" of Augustus ended before the Son 
of Man appeared. Streaks of the sunset were still upon 
the sky, but the great day of literature had passed, and 



128 ECHOES 

night was coming rapidly over the most impressive 
country and nation which the world ever saw. Only for 
a moment recall those names so familiar to us all, and as 
loved as familiar. Julius Caesar, the writer and orator, 
had been slain forty-four years before our era began. 
Cicero was murdered a few years after the great Caesar 
fell. Virgil died nineteen years before Christ came. 
Horace was in his grave forty years before Christ began 
to teach mankind. Sallust had been dead thirty-four 
years before the Child was born in the manger. Christ 
was only eighteen years old, was still an unknown car- 
penter, when Livy died. Publius Syrius, Catullus, 
Terence, all, all these gifted children of philosophy and 
song had gone to sleep long before the music of Bethle- 
hem came to the ear of the shepherds. Except Tacitus 
and Pliny, no great name ever passed over the line that 
divided the pagan and Christian periods. Not a single 
great orator or artist, poet or statesman, was remaining 
upon the Roman or Greek world when our Lord 
appeared. 

l/ong Rooted Ills Vanish Slowly. 

The ills of a city will not all vanish when it shall 
become well governed. A most perfect and most honest 
government will not bring a perfect salvation, for intem- 
perance and idleness and extravagance will remain, and 
those two great forces called labor and capital will 
still be here. They are both one, only capital is larger 
than labor. When a man's labor is worth f6oo a year, 
he is worth several thousand dollars. It would take 
quite a sum invested at six per cent, to equal such a man. 
Capital is condensed labor, labor crowded into a package 
of bills or gold like the air crowded into a Westinghouse 
cylinder, The living laborer sets free the condensed 



DAVID SWING. 129 

labor and makes it assume the form of some external 
object. Both are one only capital is the larger. They 
will draw nearer to each other as the world advances in 
intellect and goodness. 

Mr. Childs an Example. 

In this widening of human ideals a large part of the 
community has outgrown the law of demand and supply. 
The Rossis and Ricardos who stated that law so clearly 
a hundred years ago were not thinking of the welfare of 
the workingman, but only the causes of a price. The 
study and the law were cold blooded. A working man 
received fifty cents a day or less because the need was not 
great and the workingmen were numerous. In our age 
there is a vast multitude of employers who pay something 
to a man because he is a human being. An element 
undreamed of by the last century enters in the wages 
of to-day. Mr. Childs did not regard the law of demand 
and supply. His heart made some new laws, aud he 
paid as much to the human being as he did to the trade 
of the man. He could have secured labor at a low 
market price, but he hated the calculations of the last 
century and paid men what pleased his own benevolence. 
Few of you make any effort to secure help at the lowest 
rates. The human being, man, woman or boy, steps in 
and draws a few additional pennies. The sweat shops 
are places where love has not yet come. There the law 
of demand and supply works in all its old-time barbarity. 

"We Must be Wholly Free ! 

The redeeming process must go forward until w^e are 
wholly free. It was once enough for a man if he were a 
Presbyterian or a Catholic, but such a goal is no longer 
adequate. This kind of person must now add to his 



130 ECHOES 

name a new group of virtues. He must be intelligent, 
temperate, just, kind, lofty. The human beauties have 
grown more rapidly than the beauties of art have 
advanced. It is seen how music has run from the old 
monotony of the Hebrews and Greeks to the wonderful 
compositions of the Italians and Germans. The modern 
soul would almost die under the old music. It would 
not be high enough, nor low enough, nor wide enough, 
nor sweet enough. But morals have advanced by the 
same path, and yet this city, encompassed and inspired 
by ideals many and great, permits itself to be governed 
by the abandoned classes. It is as though the orator, 
Daniel Webster, had asked some African ape to speak in 
his stead ; it is as though Jennie Lind had asked some 
steam foghorn to sing her part. When from the splendor 
of this city, from its high people, from its intelligent 
and sunny homes, from its churches, from its immortal 
summer of 1893, one passes to the centralized govern- 
ment the heart cries out : Alas, Jennie Lind, why did 
you suppose that a fog-horn could take your place and 
sing for us that mighty song : "I Know that My 
Redeemer Liveth." In the midst of the discord it is 
difficult to believe that a redeemer lives. 

]^artli the Mother Home of the Race For 
Thousands of Years. 

The lawyers, the statesmen, the patriots, the philan- 
thropists, all demand a religion that shall blend with 
these days of earth, and help it in its liberty, in its law, 
in its arts, its letters, its honors, its pleasures. These 
noble ones believe in immortality, but they believe that 
a good earth is the best stepping stone to Heaven. They 
believe God loved earth, or He would not have made it 
and caused to pass over it such a procession of souls, 



DAVID SWING. * 131 

They believe that the children of this world will be 
called one by one to eternity, but they believe that for 
thousands of years yet the earth will remain the arena of 
human life, and that as a mother lovingly provides for 
her children, though she may be on the morrow to leave 
them forever, so all noble souls will toil for mankind 
present and to come, of the persecutions and desolations 
of the former centuries, where a million people went 
hungr}^ and barefoot that one king or one prince might 
be arrayed in splendor ; out of the persecutions that made 
religion mean martyrdom — came a melancholy which we 
pity and forgive. But here our charity terminates, and 
now we behold a period when a new world lying before 
the Church asks it to put aside its indifference and gird 
itself for the welfare of this great encapment on the 
shores of time. 

Words are [Embalmed Ideas. 

Words are the embalmed ideas of the long yesterday. 
Each separate word is a truth. When, therefore, a 
genius like old Job is born into the world, and finds 
about him only the narrow Hebrew tongue, he enters 
upon a long imprisonment, unconscious, indeed, but real- 
He can utter some sublime things, but his mind is lim- 
ited, like the soul of the Swiss child born only in the 
mountains. When a genius like Goothe or Webster is 
born into such a universe of words as is seen in the 
German or English, it is the soul's own fault or sin if it 
does not move out freely and grandly toward the waiting 
human race. It is said of Dante that he was compelled 
to make the Italian language while he made his song ; 
that he was compelled to ransack all the domain of 
Italian thought in order to find words and inflections 
which he might use and that could be woven into 



132 ECHOES 

peetic melody. It is beautifully said that before he could 
sing his music he was compelled first to make a harp. 
What a wonderful inheritence, then, must belong to each 
3-oung mind in this country, who at birth falls heir to one 
of the three great tongues, French, English or Ger- 
man. 

The Street Called ''By-and-By." 

Some of the the most biting aphorisms of the great 
writers have been uttered against the spirit of delay that 
broods over the soul. One says, **We pass our life in 
deliberation, and die in it." "Delavs have dans^erous 
ends," says Shakespeare. ''To-morrow is a satire on 
to-day," said Young. But Cervantes states well the 
folly of feeding etemalh' on hope. He says : ' ' By the 
street called Bj'-and-by . you reach a house called Xever. ' * 
Thus in the Hterature of all ages, from the Bible to the 
page of the Spaniard, you find that mankind early 
learned the imposition that expectation was playing upon 
it, and sought out biting words to warn us against its 
snare. The great mission of hope is to inspire the pres 
ent. The dazzling glory of the future is only to make 
the present all light around the foot. But if man sits 
down and waits till he shall come to the dazzling 
morrow, the morrow at once becomes dark ; it takes back 
e^'er^' banner of hght, because the gazing soul has not 
read aright its significance. 

The Pulpit Should Adorn the Battlefield. 

The church should bless the soldiers for having b^- 
their blood atoned for the cowardice of the sanctuary'. 
The pulpit should adorn the battlefields that brought 
to them the unsullied Christ of Nazareth and Calvar\^ 
In the processions of this day the church should 



DAVID SWING. 133 

march as a penitent full of regre;s that wearing the 
name of Jesus it made such a poor estimate of the 
rights of man. Had the church done its moral duty in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the nineteenth 
would have escaped the awful war of brother against 
brother, South against North. When a religion espouses 
a great wrong, then the sword and the battlefield must 
come. Violence must come when love has failed. 

Decoration Day a Perpetual Institution. 

But while we meditate aud stand with hands full of 
memorial wreaths, the scene expands, the holy ground 
widens from State to State, from mountain to prairie, and 
from ocean to lake and river, until at last the heart bows 
down in grief over the silent forms of 300,000 men. They 
gave up life that we might live more nobly. Of this 
number not many fell in instant death. Nearly all went 
out by the gate of long agony, asking help that could not 
come, and thinking of the loved ones they would never 
see again. And all this suffering, all this dying was 
for us who to-day are speaking the language and taking 
the footsteps and seeing all the scenes and joys in the 
sunshine of life! Decoration Day ought to come back as 
long as our mind can study political principles, and as 
long as our heart can appreciate the self-denial of a sol- 
dier. Especially should the pulpit and the church scatter 
flowers on the graves of the Union dead, for those awful 
battles and the awful carnage were planned by the blind- 
ness and weakness of religion. Christians in England 
opened a trafiic in human bodies and souls. The pulpit 
was too weak or too ignorant to oppose slavery in its 
beginning. 



134 ECHOES 

The Bible An Open Book. 

The Bible may be a closed book to man}^ modem 
philosophers and casuists, but to the multitude at large 
it lies an open book, with a light better than that of the 
sun upon its page. In fact, in order to learn the value 
of the Bible, we must repair to the multitude, for the}^ 
make up that vast audience to whom its words were 
spoken, and they make up a jury that interprets the 
Word without prejudice. If the Bible had been com- 
posed for the highest order of purely intellectual men, 
then the}' would be indeed the only commentators we 
should dare consult. In seeking for the meaning of 
Puffendorff, we may willingly consult all the learned 
moralists, and one may well read a learned commentator 
upon a learned Blackstone; but when one comes to read 
letters from his mother or his friend, or the poems of 
Cowper or Burns, he may dispense with Augustine and 
Calvin, and may go to the writings in his own mind and 
soul. The Bible is God's word to the people. . 

** Protestant" and '' Catholic." 

No one can reason over the words "Protestant" and 
* 'Catholic" without making great use of the phrase 
"long ago." Over the Piedmond massacre John Milton 
wrote his elegant sonnet: 

*' Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold. ' ' 

:^ ><: :^ J-< >|< >»c ^ 

" Forgot not. In thy book record their groans 
Who were thj^ sheep and in their ancient folds. 
Slain b}' the blood}' Piedmontese that rolled 
Mother and infant dow'n the rocks." 

But we must not permit our indignation to make us for- 
get that more than two hundred years have passed since 



DAVID SWING. 135 

that massacre, and that in the meantime the Protestants 
have put to death many witches and have dealt heavily 
in slaves, and have run an inquisition against Africans. 

Religion Should Stand Great. 

Religion should never bend much downward, but 
should stand calm and divine upon its lofty mountain, 
and entice the multitude upward. It is marvelous how 
soon a crowd will rise to the level of its leader. Moses 
dashed to pieces the golden calf, and steadfastly lifted up 
the true God. In a few years the Israelites arose from 
the idol to the living Jehovah. There is a limit to the 
usefulness of the law of accommodation. There is a law 
of ideals which makes it necessary that each individual 
and each group of individuals should be held by the vision 
of something above self. In the career of Christianity 
only those leaders can conduct the Church to success who 
are able, and who are brave enough to stand above the 
people and to invite them to higher seats. The idea of a 
miiaculous call into the ministry has let loose into the 
world hundreds of teachers who, instead of leading the 
people upward, have helped them back. 

'*Wolf! Wolf!" 

Many of our aphorisms and phrases possess a reverse 
side. "The wolf in sheep's clothing" is rivaled by the 
lamb, concealed in the skin of the wolf. Men cry, 
* 'Wolf ! " ' 'Wolf ! ' ' when the creature is found at last to 
be only a lamb. The maxim, ' 'not all is gold that glit- 
ters," is equaled by the truth that much which does not 
glitter is pure gold. Many an idea which seemed to onr 
fathers a roaring lion about to destroy society and the 
church, proves now to have been a dove, which ought to 
have made its home in the church altars. Much of 



136 ECHOES 

thought which our fathers supposed nothing but a New 
England freak of the mind is now the best philosophy of 
all human life. But all these changes from poison to 
honey take place in long time. Sometimes ten years will 
suffice, but in our era fifty years are the more common 
distance between hate and love. Long ago centuries 
were consumed by the people in learning the beauty of 
the beautiful, or the truthfulness of the true. Indeed it 
has been only the late time that has full}^ realized that 
Christ came as the friend of all the human race and of all 
alike; as benevolent as the sunbeam which never asks 
about the color or rank of the man who owns the field. 
Down comes the sunshine upon the farm of the negro and 
the white man, and upon the little garden of the widow. 
The European scholars asked for eighteen centuries in 
which to learn that Jesus had one word and one love for 
epch and all. It more frequently happens that a great 
truth will become known and loved in about fifty years. 

Jesus Willing to Die. 

Our dead soldiers lie in the graves that can be under- 
stood. They knew for what great end they offered up 
life. Each died for something greater than a personal 
life. A good nation may bring happiness to millions, 
and for many centuries. If our sun could not shine 
again until you should die, how soon you would say: 
"Let me perish, that the sunshine may flood the globe." 
For a great end men are willing to die. They love the 
beautiful earth and their own beautiful life, but weighed 
down by the need of all humanity at last the heart wishes 
to go down to death that the millions may rise. Thus 
Jesus of Nazareth was willing to perish. The vision of the 
brilliant future dispelled the gloom around his own fore- 
head and made the cross stand up in rosy light. Thus 



DAVID SWING. 137 

in the name of a great future for the race, good men have 
moved peacelully toward death. A certain divine logic 
enters the mind and overrules the loves of the heart. 
Mother, child, wife, friends, are left behind, because a 
mighty logic presses upon the intellect and dispels all 
pleasures except one — the service of the country; it 
makes thorny all paths except one — the path of a redeemed 
Nation. Had it not been for this divine logic with its 
power to silence, the personal pleadings of the heart, the 
world would to-day be without any great nation, without 
a hero, and without a Savior. 

To-morrow will be as To-day. 

To-morrow will only be to-day rolled on. While we 
are passing along through the early years, it is lawful 
for us to load the times to come, for then the body and 
the mind are strengthening for work, and the school 
house stands between us and the great duties of the 
world; but when manhood has fully come, this worship 
of to-morrow should be given up, and the full significance 
of the present should burst upon the intellect and soul. 
All the dazzle of to-morrow, after that, is only an ignis- 
fatuus. 

Our Sorrows Only Temporary. 

Decoration Day does not come this year to a prosperous 
and happy Nation, but to one distracted and afflicted. 
Not on this account should the graves of the soldiers 

ceive any the fewer flowers. The intellectual and 
moral littleness of these years should make all the more 
noble the men who died for our country thirty years ago. 
Compared with the leaders of to-day, those lying dead in 
the national cemeteries should assume the form of heroes 
possible in the records of poetry. It seems almost a 



138 ECHOES 

dream that we ever had such an array of statesmen and 
soldiers as springs up in memory of these memorial days. 
Out of affection and gratitude we should all hasten to 
ornament the places where they sleep. Not only were 
those men great in mind and in spirit, but the Nation 
for which they died is still great. The blunders and 
wrongs that mar the present are temporary, the merit of 
the country is more lasting. When the great storm 
swept over this inland sea recently, all seemed on the 
verge of ruin. How could any ship outlive such anger? 
How could any shore stand the shock of such waves? 
But in a few hours the storm ceased and the trees stood 
up straight and beautiful, and the grass was fresh and 
happy. Thus, however, troublous the times, the Nation 
is still here to wait in patience the clearer sky of to-mor- 
row. The ills we suffer are those of only a day and not 
those of a life time or a century. 

The Study of Man is the Study of Mind. 

The perpetual study of man is the perpetual study of 
all mind, human or angelic, or divine. As soon as man 
learns that men must love one another, he learns that 
God must love all His children. A truth upon earth 
must be a truth in heaven. A circle crossed by diameters 
in our great desert would be seen as a circle by the minds 
in Mars. Therefore, as humanity unveils its own moral 
beauty, it paints the divine portrait. Thus every white 
flag of love and peace, waved by benevolence upon earth, 
implies that there is an unseen flag of love waving on the 
walls of God's own palace. Earth and heaven are one in 
morality. The existence of sin, suffering, and death 
need not mar this portait of the Creator; because the 
immensity of the universe, of its times and aims, makes 
capable of concealing nearly all the essential facts. If 



DAVID vSWING. 139 

we imagine that some inhabitant of some other planet, a 
being as intellectual as Dante or Milton, had touched our 
earth at Yorktown in 1871, and to his amazement had 
seen men fighting to the death, had seen the wounded 
carried back and had trembled at the thunder of the guns, 
he would have said: "What folly, what wickedness is 
this?" There in those autumn fields, under the sweet 
October skies, where the colored woods and the autumn 
leaves rustling to the foot, ought to make man a poet 
and a worshiper, sword and bayonet were doing their 
bloody work. It would be necessary for the stranger to 
sit down and hear the whole history of the earth; he 
would have to learn of primitive man as a savage, learn 
of truth coming by labor and battle, he would need, at 
least, to see despotism filling all the past before York- 
town, and a great nation of freemen coming down out 
of the future. Thus, taken into the past and the future, 
the roar of the guns would seem music and the soldiers 
of liberty all heroes. So we can not condemn this scene 
of pain in human life, for there is no one to tell us what 
lay back of these ills, and what brilliant years may be in 
waiting before them. The best influence is that the con- 
flict here is carrying the soldiers all forward toward some 
divine and perpetual republic. 

Beauty Following Thought. 

When thought comes beauty follows, only purifying 
itself in the deeper thought. As men grow more impress- 
ive in features and women grow more beautiful, as the 
thought and truth of the world increase, so all beauty 
grows with the growing volume of knowledge and wis- 
dom. The more profound the age in wisdom, the better 
will be its music. An Indian tribe could not have writ- 



140 ECHOES 

ten the funeral march of Beethoven, because that compo- 
sition could only come in an age that had power to look 
upon death with a might}' intellect and see the eniire 
spectacle of man falling down from his height into the 
silence of the strange deep. Thus the great intellect 
must be followed bj^ great beaut}'. The greatness of the 
thought suggests the greatness of the decoration. Xo one 
in Paris would repair to a French milliner's shop to see 
beauty, because there is no great thought in the shop. 
One had better take a long walk and enter the tomb 
of Napoleon, where greater reflection would lie under the 
ornaments: or go to the Church of St. Denis, whose walls 
seem still sounding with the eloquence of Massillon, when 
he uttered his solemn oration over the princes whom 
death had transferred into dust. Where great thought 
has been thither beauty has always run with swift foot. 

The Reformation Occupied Three Hundred Years. 

What is known as the Reformation did not begin with 
Luther, but it dawned when the nations began to open 
the long closed avenues of thought and sentiment. In 
the beginning of the fourteenth centur\', Dante was almost 
as broad and free as our Gladstone and Castelar. He was 
a Greek and a Catholic joined in one manhood. He was 
a union of the Bible and Homer and Virgil. He was as 
broad as the entire past. He advocated the unity of 
language, a brotherhood of all nations, and a separation 
of state from church. After Dante the Papal literature 
almost ceased to exist, and all the colleges from Rome to 
Oxford were reveling in those wide truths and beauties 
which had created Athens and the Latin world. When 
the Pope, with his court, paid a visit to the universit}- of 
Ferrara, he was entertained b}- private theatricals taken 
from Latin plays; and he found a girl of eigh- 



DAVID SWING. 141 

teen uttering eloquent lectures upon the Greek and 
lyatin masters. She was more a rationalist than a 
church woman. The journey of the Pope was made 
in the hope of conciliating the professors and stu- 
dents to his own cause. It was too late. The 
narrow books of the monks and the clergy had faded 
under the new classic sun. They were never to shine 
again. Luther himself was on earth only sixty-three 
years. The Reformation occupied more than three hun- 
dred years. Luther was potent only in the middle part 
of the great tumult. But that splendid period did not 
secure to the human mind all that free play of air and 
light, that rich soil, that rain and dew, that hot summer 
which are demanded by so divine a thing as the soul. 
There remained the race cf kings and aristocratic and 
blooded families. These drew wealth and all good 
toward themselves. The common people were as much 
forgotten in Spain, France and England, as they were in 
the times of the Egyptian brickyards. It was the busi- 
ness of the millions simply to work, in order to pay larg 
rents to the favored minority. 

The Poverty of the Prophet. 

Within a definite and beautiful channel moved all the 
heroism of the Old and New Testaments. It was a part 
or the Divine- Providence (the whole of which we call 
inspiration), that gave these men their isolation, and 
through it their spiritual power. The poverty of the 
prophets, their half-wild life, their perfect concentration 
upon religion, were natural agencies that helped lift 
their souls up toward Deity. Their heroism was not 
that only of a soldier who dares the chance of battle, but 
it was also that of a philosopher who despises the pleas- 
ures and applause of the fashionable world. If you ask 



142 ECHOES 

the wide world in all its high civilization, from old 
Bab3'lon to Athens, and onward to London and Paris, 
wherein lies the success of man, that broad, flashing 
world will tell j'ou, bj'- actions if not b}^ words, that 
riches, and feasting, and power, and palaces, and titles, 
and the beautj^ of woman, the hilarity- of wine, the ro- 
mance of song, make up the significence of human life. 
In such a man3'-colored light societ}' has alwa3's moved 
along in its dance of life and death. 

I<ittle Souls cannot be kept from the Bosom of God. 

That God will approve of nothing wrong, is the hope of 
the world as to virtue. That he will reward those who 
love Him is the refuge of peace for each soul. In the pres- 
ence of the God unveiled b}' Christ, the mother ma}- in 
perfect hope lay down her infant in the grave. She needs 
place no hoh' earth in its coffiin, no baptism upon its 
forehead ; she need read no ambiguous words from the 
rubric or the confession, for the God in Christ is a great 
God, and none but the consciously and willingh- sinful 
need tremble at His wrath. As for the children in their 
tombs, they need no intervention of holy water or holy 
ground. All the maledictions of earth, all the condem- 
natory- laws of all the bishops, all the anathemas of a 
thousand popes, could not detain one of those little souls 
a moment from the bosom of God. 

Christmas and the Feasting- of the Thousands. 

In the stor\- of the feeding of the multitude, there was 
more food after the feast than there was in its beginning; 
for the feast began in what one boy had in a basket ; but 
it took twelve boys and twelve baskets to carrj^ away the 
fragments left on the tables and the grass. The expla- 
nation is given us in the statement that the Divine Lord 
presided at the out-door table, and had made stan-ation 



DAVID SWING. 143 

turn into a banquet. The story illustrates well the mul- 
tiplication of beauty when a great religion and a great 
philosophy repose beneath it, for what was one basketful 
when the hungry ones began to eat, becomes afterward 
more basketfuls than many hands can carry away from 
the blessed field. Christmas is the twelve baskets full 
found remaining from the first simple arts, and it should 
be an adequate explanation for us that a great Savior has 
passed over the banqueting ground. 

Days when God was all. 

What we call civilization is not the human condition 
that speaks always the most intense spiritual words. 
In a broad age the heart may love so many things that 
it loves nothing deeply. When the authors of the book 
of Job and of the Psalms wrote, there was nothing grand 
in the world but religion. There was no arts, no poli- 
tics, no sciences, no romance. The greatest theme of 
poet and harpist was God. 

Vines and Flowers. 

It is impossible for the human mind to unfold in 
strength without unfolding toward beauty. There has 
been no instance of a purely useful progress. The 
moment a race has reached the reason that could create 
laws and found homes, in that moment has the race 
reached a love of ornamentation. When wisdom builds 
a house, then taste appears to decorate the house. 
When wisdom founds a republic, then taste comes to 
adorn the republic. Beauty can come without wisdom, 
but there is no instance in which wisdom has come with- 
out beauty. An effort has been made at times to sup- 
press beauty — an effort by the monks, then by the Cal- 
vinists, then by the Quakers, but these efforts have 
been over-whelmed by the rush of the whole human 



144 ECHOES 

race, and while the ascetics were most active in their 
little arenas, Europe was painting and carving and 
building and was planning its greatest music. The 
Monks, the Calvinists. the Friends were soon hidden 
like cold rocks, under wreaths of vines and flowers. 
Musical instruments have entered the churches which 
once lived upon salvation alone, and now the Presby- 
terian and Methodist children dress like lilies and violets 
and dance like the waving boughs of trees or the waving 
fields of wheat. 

The Outlook Draped With Clouds. 

If only a few men in a generation were struggling for 
gold, the world could bear the strain, but when the pub- 
lic philosoph}' is material, and all the sweet infants are 
born into the passion for money as they are born into 
liberty and language, the outlook seems draped with 
clouds. 

The Hindoo Fakirs Are All Theologians. 

Men come to the minister of religion and ask him how 
he explains this and that dark page of history, this or that 
dogma. Oftentimes the best reply would be, ''Turn 
aside from all that record and go and ask this age, these 
scenes, the wants of to-day, the longings of your soul to 
give you back the lost or injured God." Much that is 
called theolog}' is only the place where men have trampled 
down the ground in their own mad conflicts. In India 
devout heathen move in procession through the streets 
sa^-ing, "ram," "ram," and the spectators bow because 
those who run are priests of religion: but the infinite 
God is not there. Those fakirs that cut their bodies 
with knives are all theolosrians. 



DAVID SWING. 145 

Coleridge in Chamouni. 

As a fact, no age will ever be able to find an exact 
image of the Creator. But the world is cumulative, and 
will, as a general rule, give in its later estimate .more 
truth in religion than it found in all former meditations. 
Hence, you feel ever the impulse of worship, the sweet- 
ness of it, the solemnity of it in the spirit, 3^ou are careful 
to kneel at the altar of a great God, that you may your- 
self be transfigured on the holy mount. It often comes 
to pass that the best worship comes into the soul when it 
is out under the heavens at night, or in the forests in 
Summer, because there the infinity of the sky, that host 
of stars whose light has come to us by falling a million 
years, or the sweet solitude of the forest, where every 
leaf seems written upon by the finger of the Omnipresent 
One, fills the human spirit with such a consciousness of 
a great God, that the worshiper bursts forth in tears. 
Coleridge, in the valley of Chamouni, betrays the secret 
of all deep worship: 

Awake, 
Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my heart, awake ! 
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn, 
Thou first and chief sole sovereign of the vale, 
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night 
And visited all night by troops of stars. 

The Years an i^truscan Vase. 

Write down, my young friend, as a law of God worthy 
of your love, this potency of the human will. Guided by 
the right, the right of public and private life, and the 
right in religion, it will take these years and shape them 
as the potter shapes clay into an Ktruscan vase. But, 
this law neglected, all these years sink into a sleep that 
knows no waking. 



146 ECHOES 

Where Sin Is God is Not. 

The religious history of the world marks not the place 
where God has been, but only the places where human 
hope and human madness, human darkness and light, 
met and struggled and bled. When the poor heretic was 
burned at Geneva, when the covenanter girl was tied to 
the stake where the tide would slowly rise over her, 
when the witches were burned, when infants were damned 
God was not present: religion was not there. Those 
places were spots where contending men met just as old 
Carthage and old Alexandria were places where opposing 
vandals came together. 

Highest Education Tends to Simplicity. 

It is now well known that the highest education itseli 
tends to a simplicity of words and thought. Youth and 
romantic years ma}- love obscure dreamings, and there 
are conditions of intellect that delight in the unfathom- 
able of thought, but the world as a vast body of rational 
beings delights in truths the clearest and language the 
simplest. As the open sunlight is dear to all, so men 
like to sit down in the best light of truth. And if this is 
not true ot all the days of men, it is true of their best 
days at least, the days of most sincerity and solemnity. 

Christmas a Highwave of Goodwill to Men. 

That Christmas which in these December days is at- 
tempting to express itself over all the cities and villages 
of two continents, which is hanging its wreathes, bedeck- 
ing its pine trees, buying its gifts, preparing its table, 
inviting its guests, singing its anthems and songs, is 
only an effort of human love to express itself to the 
rushing world. It sa^'s to the pulpit, "You cannot fully 
express me;" it saj's to the books, 'Y^ou cannot fully 



DAVID SWING. 147 

proclaim me;" it says to the artist, "You cannot paint 
my picture;" it says to the organ and violin, "You 
cannot sound forth my presence and charm. I shall go 
to every fireside, and shall ask all the inmates of the 
scattered homes to put my wreathes in their windows 
and kindle my fire on every hearth. To all the argu- 
ments of the statesman I shall add the pleadings of 
flowers in mid- winter, and to all the pleadings of litera- 
ture and of the orators I shall add the happy laughter of 
the little child, and thus by many concurring voices, 
each beautiful ; by many witnesses, all telling one beau- 
tiful thought, I will teach the Jew and Gentile that 
Christ's religion is a wave, high and wide, of good- will 

to men." 

Usefulness is born of lyOve. 

As liberalism is the seeker of the wider truth and the 
more permanent usefulness, so its opposite is the disipa- 
tion of the soul's forces over what is not of long life nor 
of value while it lives. The greatest usefulness comes 
from the concentration of love upon objects the most no- 
ble. The moment a man finds time or the disposition to 
love some small rite or ceremony, that moment his heart 
has divided up its current. Instead of flowing into the 
sea majestically like the Amazon, its love spreads out 
like the delta of the Nile into a hundred channels, through 
no one of which can an ocean ship pass. Any great 
truth sailing up toward such a heart must anchor on the 
outside. 

The Greatness of the World. 

Often when one falls into a deep thought over the earth 
with its marvelous qualities and contents, its size, its mo- 
tions, its seasons, its land, water, air, light, its motion 
around its axis, and around the sun, its speed — sixty- 
eight thousand miles an hour — forever, the sunlight and 



148 ECHOES 

moonlight on the fields and waters, its forests, its fields, 
its fruits, its harvests, its grasses, its blossoms, its rains, 
its dews, its lightening, its thunder, its life, beginning 
in the butterfly and ending in man, its great animal — 
man — a marvelous mind, amazing in art, reason, love, 
memory, and hope ; man — the amazing creature that 
lives and — what is as wonderful — dies ; the mind sinks 
from weakness and sa3^s : "It is impossible! Such 
things cannot be true ; there is no such world ; such 
things could not be ; it is some dream, the reality is 
plainly impossible." But after the mind has said over 
and over, •' The world is impossible," its decision is set 
at naught by the real, for the foot moves out upon the 
ground, the hand plucks a flower^ the eye sees the 
heavens and the ocean, friends call, the streets swarm 
with life, they roar with industry, and the impossible 
surrenders gracefully to the fact. Thus with the idea of 
God. Its greatness forms no obstacle in the path of 
faith. The words infinite, eternal, invisible, all-wise, 
and omnipresent are made necessarj^ not by the books 
of the theologian, but by the unparalleled greatness and 
wonder of the entire spectacle. 

The New Testament has been Compelled to keep bad 

Company. 

God alone can look through incidents or accidents and 
see the intrinsic worth bej^ond. The human mind can 
not penetrate the universe, but it must look at the exter- 
nals and there locate its love or hate. The New Testa- 
ment has been compelled to keep some very bad com- 
pany in its da}' . It had to live awhile with Augustine, 
who was as much Pagan as Christian, and who was as 
obscure as midnight. It suffered from partnership with 
Tertullian, and then from the long dark ages which 



DAVID SWING. 149 

taught all the follies possible to human imagination, and 
quoted God's words in their support ; and then from 
even Lnther and Calvin, who added as much of the false 
and the terrible to the Bible as they drew from it of the 
true and beautiful. Thus all the way of its march the 
divine book has suffered from the badness of the com- 
pany it has kept. 

Space Seems Impossible. 

The universe transcends the mind in so many places 
and manners that man need not be surprised to find him- 
self surpassed by the conception of a Creator. Space 
seems impossible, because man can not conceive of that 
which has no outer boundary. If space possed an outer 
boundary, then there would be still room beyond the 
bound. Space is therefore impossible. So time is made 
impossible by the fact that everything must have had a 
beginning, and if time has a beginning there must have 
been something previous to time. 

The Fourth and Fifth Centuries. 

In the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, the 
European state closed the Greek and Latin gates against 
the human intellect, and ordered those who could read or 
who desired to read, to study the holy writings of the 
monks and the ecclesiastics of all degrees. For centuries, 
the public mind drew its nutriment from the biographies 
of wonderful ascetics and metaphysical inquirers. Instead 
of being a distributor of all valuable goods, the religio- 
state was busy in keeping all the classic goods away 
from the multitude. Instead of helping the Selkirk on 
his island home, the State invaded the island to rob him, 
and instead of giving what he needed, it took away his 
hatchett, his saw, and his gun. A city of antiquity 'was 
captured, not by a beating down of walls, or by the 



I50 KCHOEJS 

device of the wooden horse, but by cutting off the river 
which flowed through it. Without water for man or 
beast, the great capital was compelled to surrender. 
Thus the state church cut off from the Christian public 
the classic river, and soon the mind surrendered, and the 
Dark Ages set in. 

No More Military Poems. 

No military poems have been composed since the com- 
ing of Jesus Christ. Before His day, the most gifted 
brains busied their muse with the battles of Agamemnon, 
Achilles, and ^nas. But when after Christ the highest 
form of literature began to come back to the world, the 
battle-cry, the mad career of ambition, the rolling chariot, 
the cloud of arrows, had disappeared from poetry. 

An ;^ndless Problem. 

All minds which assume the existence of a God, must 
consent to confess together over ^n endless problem — 
endless as to this world — the nature of God. A thought- 
ful atheism would not escape debate and unrest, because 
it would be compelled to contend always with the ques- 
tion, how natural forces could make such a universe and 
fill it with such a thinking mind as that of man. The 
universe without a God seems at least as difficult as the 
universe with one. Atheism is, therefore, no escape 
from mental perplexity. Man is here, and in such cir- 
cumstances that an intellectual battle is unavoidable. 
Atheist or Deist, he must live in the presence of a great 
problem. The only escape trom the perplexing inquiries 
is to be found in an indifference akin to sleep or mental 
torpidity. 



DAVID SWING. 151 

Many Thoughts Die. 

Not all new thoughts are the result of the age, for 
there is a great difference between a new thought and a 
new truth. Many thoughts die. The socialism of 
Fourier and Owen was only a thought. The age did 
not make it and would not support it, but liberty was a 
truth of the age and on it went with a resistless impulse. 
The mind now possesses such a new activity that it is 
overflowing with projects. Not one-third part of these 
ever turn into great truths. The flying instrument of 
Darius Green never took its place among the products of 
the century. It was only a suggestion. Darius made a 
motion, but it was not seconded. 

But I/ittle New Truth. 

No one therefore, can teach us anything about man 
and God, but there is many a one, poet or writer or 
friend, who can persuade us to pass once again along an 
old path. We can easily imagine a meeting of two as- 
tronomers, a Herschel and a Mitchell, and a long con- 
versation as coming, which, without giving to either a 
single new thought, would make the universe more 
thrilling to both ; or we can conceive of a meeting be- 
tween two great statesmen, which conference, without 
adding a shadow of new truth to either mind, might 
make them both weep over the greatness and beauty of 
civilization. If the pulpit had to be a bureau of infor- 
mation many honest clergymen would at once resign ; 
but they may well remain in their places, because the 
chief ends of thought and speech are to canvass the field 
of probability and hope, to keep thought active, to re- 
trace old paths, to entice each other away from a pure 
materialism and ^ to pour into some hours an element of 
spirituality. 



152 KCHOKS 

Poverty and Wealth. 
Daniel and Isaiah and Ezekiel, who knew of nothing 
great in the world except the great Jehovah. In povert}^ 
came all these men, rich onh' in their dreams of the Kins: 
of kings. To them earth was remarkable, not for its art 
and sciences, but as being the temple of God. 

Conditions of Success. 

The success of mankind all depends upon three things: 
the discover}' of its laws being well-being, its freedom to 
obey those laws, and the goodness that will render obedi- 
ence. No one of these three elements can alone secure 
good for man. Freedom to follow law is vain, unless 
man knows what are the laws of his nature. Knowledge 
is vain without freedom; and both knowledge and 
freedom are useless unless the heart has the goodness 
that will make its knowledge andlibertj^ pass into action. 
The Indians have freedom, but the}' do not what are the 
highest aims of the human spirit. The criminal and the 
vagabond have both the information and the liberty, but 
they are wanting in that goodness which can turn truth 
and freedom into the actuality of being. Three ingredi- 
ents must, therefore, meet to compose a valuable society 
— knowledge, freedom and goodness. 

Not I^verything Beautiful. 

Not every single thing was to be beautiful, but there 
was to be a great tendency in that direction. Not much 
would escapt its touch. There was to be here and there 
a flower which no woman or child would care for ; and 
now and then a shell with no color in the lining. But 
these exceptions were to weigh little with any mind 
which should study the general tendency of all nature to 
burst out into beauty. The workers in wood find more 



DAVID SWING. 153 

than thirty kinds which reveal beauty when their sur- 
face is polished. The number of stones which polish 
into beauty must be above a hundred. At least the 
number is great enough to employ man's hand and de- 
light his heart. 

Egotism. 

Not simply were those Bible-makers from Moses to. 
Paul all intellectually gifted, but they were almost sub- 
lime in the heroism of their conduct. We are all by 
nature worshipers of heroes. Heroism is the subjection 
of self to the interest of a multitude or of a principle. 
One of the largest and weakest qualities in man is his 
egotism. Egotism is an emotion that makes other 
people unimportant compared with self. It is the will- 
ingness that others should bear the burden of toil and of 
poverty, that others should die on the battle-field, that 
others should care for the poor and sit by the bedside of 
the dying. Egotism is the nomination and the election 
and coronation of self as king. Heroism is the opposite 
sentiment. By as much as the former is contemptible, 
the latter is sublime. As the world hates the one, it 
loves the other. 

Thomas Jefferson. 

Thomas Jefferson deduced from all literature and his- 
tory the notion that the slaves ought to be free, and at 
last he said: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book 
of fate than that these people are to be free. ' ' But the spec- 
tacle of liberty had not become biilliant enough to trans- 
form the statesman into a champion of immediate liberty 
for al'. Mr. Phillips came a half century later, when the 
facts of the Nation had become deeply impressive. While 
we award praise to the orator, let us not forgei that com- 



154 ECHOES 

munity which in silence enacted the beautiful drama of 
the untrammeled mind. The Northern people, in their 
life, made the speech for the statesman. 

The Bible in the Schools. 

While the Bible held its place in the schools by power 
of conscience, or by a cheerful public consent, all was 
well. Its lessons fell on good ground, like seed upon 
rich soil in the sunshine of Spring. When these divine les- 
sons at last need the strong arm of law, and of doubtful or 
unjust law, to sustain them in public schools, then they 
cease to fall upon the heart as dew from Heaven, but 
come to the ear more as orders from a powerful despot, 
whose potency is to be found in the police. In a New 
England village, two weeks ago, in a school where half 
were Catholic and half were Protestant children, the 
village schoolmaster and village priest fell to fighting in 
the school room as to the reading or the not reading 
of the sermon on the Mount. It is said that much of 
German infidelit}' has come from an enforced religion. 
Compulsory- Bibles and compulsor}^ pra3^ers have never 
proven a valuable element in the spread of religion. 

Salvation and Forms. 

In the former centuries it was well enough to combine 
inseparably salvation and forms, salvation and baptism, 
or salvation and a church, or salvation and a certain 
"experience." for then all were readj^ to believe any 
thing, and the more ceremonj^ there was the more 
welcome the religion. Even such a proud and loft}^ 
king as lyouis XIV. said in his dying moments, " I 
have done whatever m}-- Church has told me to do. I 
know nothing of Christian dut}^ except as directed by 
my bishops. If I have done wrong the blame rests 



DAVID SWING. 155 

upon them." In all former times it mattered not if 
Heaven and trifling forms were bound together. But in 
our age there has come to the surface a new class of 
persons. Issuing from a new world of literature, of 
developed reason, of deep, sober reflection, they de- 
manded a Christianity purified. They will not, like 
lyouis XIV., say, **I h*ave done whatever my priest 
has told me to do;" but, cutting loose from these 
human masters, and passing out into the new world of 
light and liberty, they will place their hand upon their 
heart, and looking up to God, say, "What wouldst 
Thour 

Religion Kind to All Ages. 

Adult life is drawn into the great December whirl of 
joy, not only because of the power of sympathy between 
age and childhood, but also because a religion which is 
kind to one age must be kind to all ages. A philosophy 
which loves little children cannot insult a Mary Mag- 
dalen, nor be unmoved by the common cry of one race. 
Within the whole bound of such a system a prodigal 
can say: "I will arise and go to my father." To a 
heart kind toward a child any strong man may repair. 
In it even the brute may take refuge, for the human soul 
can have only one color. As the sun touches all objects, 
stone, or water, or leaf, or face, with its one kind of 
beam, so the kind heart has for man or brute, child and 
adult, only one dominant sentiment. Therefore, the 
Christmas for children involves all middle life and the 
later years in its outpouring of good will. 

Saviour. 

He calls Himself "Saviour" but He waits not to 
place Himself upon the platform of the various theories 
regarding the manner of the great price paid or to be 



156 e:choks 

paid for the soul. He seems to love the broad name of 
"Saviour" or leader of the soul, that all, of whatever 
age, child or father, of whatever condition, learned or 
unlearned, may take the grand word to heart, and draw 
life and peace from it merciful, elastic breath. On ac- 
count of this tendency of Christ to deal in universals. He 
has stood forth in beauty and light even when around 
those who pretended to' follow Him has roared the storm 
of debate. The long and bloody conflict that has often 
made the Christian Church resemble the arena of Nero's 
gladiators, or the orgies of the painted Indians, arose out 
of these limited intellects which emerged from cells and 
convents and inquired whether the atonement was limited 
or general, whether the halo about the Christ was de- 
rived or underived and whether the Holy Ghost pro- 
ceeded eternally from the Father alone or from both the 
Father and the Son. 

August Comte. 

Fifty years have passed since August Comte began to 
promulge what he called "The Positive Philosophy." 
He was led to it by his long study of all that past which 
had viewed all things in a theological light or in a 
metaphysical light. According to this acute Frenchman 
the human family had lived long enough under the 
theological theory ; long enough under the idea that God 
or the gods had decreed this or that form of being or 
event. He afiirmed also that, after mankind had wasted 
years and ages in the construction of theological systems, 
more time still was lost over metaphysical inquiries. 
He asked the world to leave both these old paths and 
begin to study all the facts of man and nature and thus 
have the pleasure of walking in a path which lay within 
a reality. Man was to be an observer, not a theorizer. 



DAVID SWING. 157 

He was to learn from the facts all the general principles 
and laws which human life would need for its conduct. 
As our mathematics, agriculture and machinery, do not 
repose upon theology or metaphysics, so all the social 
duties and privileges and pleasure were to rest upon 
what facts man could collect and examine and classify. 
Thus was man to escape from all simple conjecture and 
be the possessor of a positive philosophy. 

It was a grave objection to this method that it omitted 
the idea of God, and, therefore, all the phenomena of 
worship and religion. It was a cold study of facts, 
much like the estimates of the astronomer or the geo- 
grapher. Comte, however, revealed in his books the 
new style of the present age — the new weariness over 
abstractions and unmeaning miracles, and the new fond- 
ness for the daily facts of man's life. 

** Righteous »»—" Converted." 

A righteous man must be confessed to be a converted 
man. The Church possesses no analysis by which it can 
open a heart and find that morality is not regeneration, 
and that the prayers and hymns of a ' 'moralist' ' do not 
issue from the Holy Spirit, who, imaged as a dove, flies 
back and forth forever over the ocean of soul. There are 
hundreds of men in this city and every where, who, lov- 
ing the New Testament, and bowing in reverence before 
its central character, and living and upright life, are yet 
viewed as heirs of perdition, because they have not 
passed through an ''experience" defined by mistaken 
fathers, who seemed to be able to analyze the workings 
of the spirit both of man and. of God. In closing its 
doors against ''mere moralists," in waiting for only those 
who should come through the gate of miracle^ through 



158 ECHOES 

the tumult of an "experience," the Church has shut out 
a large upper class, and has not only deprived itself of 
power, but has done an unjustice toward some of the 
noblest members of society. 

Christ Spoke for a Whole World. 

Do not permit these proud daj^s to deceive \'ou. The 
time is not far awa^' when 3'ou will feel that it is not in 
the power of rhetoric or passion to add anything to the 
words of Jesus Christ. The metaphj'sician ma}* secretl}^ 
regret that the Xazarene did not discourse like a Plato 
or a Locke ; the poet ma}- wish that the Son of Man had 
said more about land, sea, and sky, about opening spring- 
time or the falling leaf; the Calvinist and Trinitarian 
may wish the\- could find in the Lord's discourse a 
sj-stem that should more fully shadow forth their own ; 
and devotees of science may feel at times that the Cos- 
mos of Humboldt surpasses the simple story of the 
Gospels ; but these longings and complaints are only the 
result of narrow specializations. Christ spoke for a 
whole world, for the times of its greatest need, and the 
wish of the specialist is engulfed in the wide, infinite 
wish of mankind. Our wishes are the style of time : 
Christ's manner the style of eternity. 

Washington. 

Washington was destitute of the poetic sentiment. 
He saw a great end with wonderful distinctness, and the 
path to that end. and, in the prosecution, of this gigantic 
task, December and Ma}' were both one. He maj^ have 
been thankful for flowers, but he did not complain about 
thorns. His heart was not easih' broken. When his 
troops were hungry- and in rags he spoke to them only 
the more kindly. When too feeble to fight he could re- 



DAVID SWING. 159 

treat. He could wait as long as any general living, 
When the roads were good, he advanced more easily; but 
when mud and snow were deep lie still advanced. When 
the great Benedict Arnold, one of his most trusted friends, 
betrayed a most valuable garrison, Washington closed up 
the opened gate in a few hours. When Congress was 
without sense and without skill, Washington was on 
hand with both, at all hours, with a wisdom that never 
left him for a moment in seven years. Never before had 
the world seen such a clear grasp of the value of human 
liberty and such a uniform realization of means to an end. 
His mind did not flash like a cannon or like a meteor. 
It poured out constantly, like the sun, The calmness 
he possessed w^as not that of insensibility, but it was that 
of an unchanging power. He lived in a group of years 
in which each day was great. In a time when a little 
republic was lying under the wheels of old iron chariots, 
how could any small hours come? The age not only 
lifted Washington up to a high level, but it compelled 
him to remain there until he was taken down for burial. 
Even when he retired to Mt. Vernon to find years of 
peace, the nation followed him and made him act as 
chief of the army, and of an army the most illustrous of 
any that had ever carried spear or gun. 

**I/et Me Die in Peace." 

His heart never failed but once, and that was when he 
sunk in death, saying: "You can do nothing for me. 
lyet me die in peace." 

The Power of Words. 

Father and daughter were sounds that scarcely rose 
one shade above the terms male and female ; and the 
word man differed but little from the vvord brute. But 
along came the mighty stages of development pouring 



l6o ECHOES 

around these ideas the light of new thought and the 
warmth of new love. As the foliage of each Summer, 
and the riches of the elements fall upon the earth each 
3'ear and make its soil deeper and richer, so the succes- 
sive generations cast their thoughts and affections and 
actions down upon the world of ideas, and these ideas 
grow more and more luxuriant under this long lasting 
care. Behold the Greeks adding to the import of the 
word "art" ! Under their care how the word "beauty" 
exapnds ! And then Antigone came along, born out 
of poetry, and by her pure and infinite affection put to 
shame that estimate of sister seen in the history of 
Abraham and Lot. Look into the nineteenth century 
and mark how it has enlarged these terms. Ask Cowper 
the meaning of that word "mother" that runs along 
through so many languages. He gazes at the portrait 
and says, with tears, 

"O that those lips had language." 
Christ Shaping the I/iterature of Doubt. 

The word "mother" comes down through thirty 
languages and through thirty centuries, but. 

When some one misunderstood the argument of Judge 
Booth, and accused him of denying the future life of the 
soul, he comes forward and says he should be very unwil- 
ling to deny or doubt the future life of man. Thus while 
the Judge denies the exceptional raising of Christ, he casts 
himself fully upon the future life of the soul, of Christ, 
and of all souls. Thus Christ shapes even the literature 
of doubt. Thus there is blowing all over the intellectual 
world, in its most logical hours even, a wind of paradise 
that fans all the temples that throb with being. That 
this universal hope comes from the matchless character 



DAVID SWING. i6r 

of Christ, more than from all other sources combined, I 
have not a shadow of doubt. All the ideas and emotions 
we carry in our hearts have come to us from fountains 
dripping far away from ourselves. So invisible are these 
fountains, so unconscious are our spirits of being fed by 
any such springs, that we pass along through life often 
as though we were independent thinkers, and were 
elaborating all our ideas out of our own minds, as the 
sun hurls forth light out of its own boson. 

Mistakes of Agnostics. 

The agnostic and atheistic minds make a great mistake 
when they say that it is human thought that makes 
God ; that God is a creation of man's brain. They cite 
as evidence the many gods and kinds of gods in which 
the race has believed. Such allegations are powerless 
and irrelevant ; for music and all beauty have suffered 
as much from the different students of these passing 
forms, but no one has possessed the mental weakness 
that could deduce from a discordant past the conclusion 
that there were no such an entity as music or beauty. 
On the contrary, all have affirmed that a drum, beaten 
by a savage, every word sung by a harsh Indian voice, 
has been a proof and a prophecy of a coming art power- 
ful and endless. In such a world, where early errors 
often point to coming truths, where the imperfect virtues 
of the best men point toward the character of that Being 
from whom man came. If, as the ages pass, man be- 
comes more humane, more just, more widely loving, 
these manifestations of mind proclaim in louder and 
louder accents the benevolence of God. These hands, 
open and reached out in friendship, all point in one way 
— toward a love infinite. 



1 62 ECHOES 

Ten Thoughts. 

lyooking at the Decalogue for an hour — a reading will 
not answer the demands of the Ten Thoughts — studying 
for an hour, or a da}^, that digest of principles, and 
remembering in what an age that generalization w^as 
made, when slaves were flying from bondage and scarcely 
knew which was the better, bondage or freedom, the 
heart must be lost to reason if it does not say over those 
laws, here a huge intellect has been hurling around him 
the large ideas of life, standing amid the ideas of sin, 
like Samson between the columes of the temple, need- 
ing only to reach out his arms and the whole fabric 

tumbles. 

Christinas a Simple I^anguage. 

Christmas is a language simpler than that of all the 

creeds and of all moral philosophy. While the creed is 

saying, "God is love, and man must love his neighbors;" 

while moral philosoph}- is telling man his duty toward 

man, the Christmas bells suddenly ring and the curtain 

rises upon a world where millions of hearts are carrying 

each some gift to other hearts, and for the day, the earth 

is full of that love which in philosophy, is only a dream. 

On this da}^ the theory of friendship turns into an 

action. 

Angelo and Raphael. 

Christianity helped to make Angelo and Raphael by 
furnishing them with grand themes. As no lips can be 
eloquent unless they are speaking in the name of a great 
truth, so no painter can paint unless some one brings 
him a great subject. Heaven and hell made the poet 
Dante. Christianity made Beatrice. Paradise made 
John Milton. The mother of our Lord and the last 
judgment made Angelo. It is the great theme that 
makes the orator, the painter, the poet. The great theme 



DAVID SWING. 163 

lifts up the soul and makes it the revealer of a new world. 
Great minds were sleeping in every age in some cradle 
in city and village, or lonely cottage, but they passed 
through manhood and on to the tomb unheard, because 
no great theme had come along to wake them into a 
broad, infinite life. What Gray wrote in his elegy 
possesses as much of philosophic truth as of poetic 
sweetness: 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed 
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre. 

An Ideal Christmas. 

Our age does not want the cost of Christmas to in- 
crease, but it does want its good will to men to deepen 
with each passing year. Since we stood at this festival, 
last year, our planet has carried our race once around 
the great sun, five hundred millions of miles, holding 
our homes and our world always within the reach of the 
radient light. In all that long journey the earth has 
never been awa}^ from the touch of that transforming 
love. But each December asks the sun to look down 
upon a larger human race, greater ctties, greater arts, 
greater sciences, richer fields, more blessed homes. Must 
the heart of man stand still ? It, too, must hasten for- 
ward, and put millions of miles between itself audits 
cold or savage centuries. The scenes of barbarism must 
give place to the scenes of friendship. Five hundred 
friendly Indians are said to have been sent to persuade 
their warlike fellows to accept of peace. Persuasion is 
better than guns. It is a higher art. The white man 
cannot afford to be swift to shed blood. Persuasion is 
an art that has made all the orators that have lived, and 



164 ECHOES 

beneath all the great books of the world lies the art of 
persuasion. Last week when w^ord came of the violent 
death of certain Indians there came into this city an In- 
dian who had graduated in Oxford, England, and who, 
a scholar of the highest type, is a near friend of many 
scholars in Oxford and London. He passed from the 
wild forest to the learning of Europe. No one talking 
with this dark visaged scholar will dare say a dead In- 
dian is the only good one. The maxims of an army 
often differ widely from the maxims of a Christ ; but this 
w^e know, that the maxims of Jesus wall bloom in immor- 
tality w^hen the w^orld's militar}- trappings shall all be 
forgotten dust. The death of an Indian or Indians may 
be a necessity of the hour, but that necessity is often 
the result of those wasted 3^ears in which divine power 
of persuasion did not play its nobler part. The gun is a 
poor substitute for the school-house ; and an Indian agent 
is a poor exponent of the wisdom and love of a matchless 
century. 

The Great Discoveries of our Bra. 

When we see the modern inventions we all exclaim 
what a wonderful thing it was to learn the habits and 
the power of steam and electricit}- ! But these wonders 
are only specimens of the power and beauty of all knowl- 
edge. Which would you perfer to possess, the power to 
send a dispatch quickl3^ or the power to enjoy a great 
book or a great piece of music, or to talk upon all sub- 
jects with some wise friend? The great discoveries of 
our era are only an external advertisement of a wider and 
deeper knowledge as existing in the mind of the count- 
less multitude. The steam engine is a great piece of hu- 
man knowledge, but it proclaims a wdsdom far greater 
than itself. It tells of a universal thought, of which it is 



DAVID SWING. 165 

itself only a fragment. The modern knowledge regard- 
ing industry, education, rights, conduct, home, kindness, 
all science, all morals, all beauty, is so wide and deep 
that our inventions are only one mountain peak taken in 
a range which crosses a hemisphere. 

Liberty. 

To prevent this knowledge from being useless the 
mind must live under the banner of liberty. Having 
discovered wise or beautiful paths, man must be free to 
pursue them. Memory recalls the Galileo who was not 
free to study the stars, and memory recalls all the minds 
and hearts in Russia which must breathe in whispers 
truths which ought to rend the air in song and hymn 
and in all high eloquence. These thoughts are cherished 
in cellars which ought to be like rainbows and span the 
sky. In Russia truth is divorced from liberty. 

Martyrdom an l^rror and a Crime. 

When John Rogers or Servetus was suffering in the 
flames, could the great God of Heaven have revealed 
Himself, could that wretched throng around the kindling 
fire have had their souls enlarged until the true idea of 
God could have found entrance, that company would 
have plucked the victim from the stake and have begged 
to be forgiven for an error so weak and for a crime so 
cruel. They would have wept for days over such an 
injustice to a brother, and for engaging in such a satire 
upon the Almighty. 

The God Idea. 

The religious mind, be it Christian or Deistic, does 
not carry any more of credulity than is carried about by 
the atheist. It requires as much childishness to say 
that man came from water, dirt, heat and light, as that 
he came from a God. What difference there is in the 



1 66 ECHOES 

two forms of thought is in favor of the religious mind, 
because there are a dignitj^, a sublimity, and a moral 
beauty in the assumption that our universe is the work 
of a Creator, and that we are all the children of a great 
Father. If utilit}" and beauty can be a sign of truth, 
then the God-idea appears at once as the more true. 
The coldness and narrowness of atheism are conspicuous 
and are inseparable from itself. It is unable to fan the 
noble flames in the heart ; it possesses no sympathy, no 
inspirational force, it has no romance, no beauty, no art, 
no infinite out-look. It can not possibly possess a single 
element of greatness because its universe takes its rise in 
the atoms of earth and water, and the mind which starts 
with such a causation can never find any motive for 
tending upward in emotion or life. If ' ' out of nothing 
comes nothing, ' ' then out of what is next to nothing the 
result is small. 

Tennyson's "In Memoriam." 

You all know that Tennyson could not have written 
his " In Memoriam " had he lived in the days of Homer 
or Virgil. Then he would have followed the flag of the 
Ajaxes and the Achilles, and have told us how the body 
of Hector was dragged around the streets behind the 
chariot of a savage conqueror. But Christ carried the 
modern' poet away from the dust-cloud of battle and 
made him sing a loftier song. Great as Homer is, his 
poetry has only the attractiveness of ambition and of the 
emblazonry of arms, of the marshaling of troops on a 
battle-field, and the whole pomp and circumstance of 
war. Great as Homer was, he could not have written 
one verse of the " In Memoriam," in all his gifted life. 
The Christ had not 3^et come to empty the urns of love, 
and purity and immortality^ into the human heart. 



DAVID SWING. 167 

Mozart's Desire. 
There was an hour when Mozart wished to hear only 
the Requiem. Thus in the vast world of thought there 
are times in the life of each being, however educated and 
great, when the soul asks not for argument, but for food; 
not for magnificence of sound, but for simple words of life 
and hope. Christ is fortunate in that he uttered words 
just such as men need in their best hours, words not noisy- 
like a military band cheering men onward to ambition 
and bloodshed, but sweet like a harp, helping the soul to 
pass resignedly from these shores. 

The Mind of God and of His Children. 

This strange wonderment is based upon the essential 
oneness of all intelligence. There could not be an intelli- 
gence which would not recognize the fact and thought in 
a circle traversed by diameters. But this leads to a 
greater conclusion — that the mind of God and his rational 
children is one and the same in quality, and that therefore 
all the good minds of earth are faint photographs of that 
intelligence whence they all came. What has taught us 
that man should not kill his neighbor nor steal from his 
neighbor? It was mind not long thinking that at last 
asserted these principles. All mind being one, these two 
principles appearing upon earth tell us that God, too, is 
moved by the same form of words; because there cannot 
be a mind which can escape the figures and axioms of 
either geometry or morals. It is proper, therefore, to 
affirm that all the good men upon this planet are pointing 
toward the character of Him whose throne is in the center 
of this intellectual empire. 

Politics. 

Coming to politics, we see on all sides in the new free 
governments of the earth, footprints of the Barons fight- 



l68 ECHOES 

ing with King John, and of Washington and Lafa3^ette 
struggling in the wilds of the new world. The broad 
earth, with all its mental and emotional contents, with 
all its truth and beauty, is onlj^ a place where man in 
some form of greatness has been. In the old red sand- 
stone of New England, rocks are pointed out upon which 
great birds ran thousands of years ago. Perhaps before 
the human race lived those birds spread their half-made 
wings Bnd hurried along on foot before the coming 
storm. And in those da3's the storms were terrific. 
The clouds swept hot and low, and the whole earth 
trembled with the thunder. Along the great western 
river there are cliffs a thousand feet high, and between 
them a valley five miles wide, the scene telling us what 
a mighty river flowed in that vale before man came to 
the Garden of Eden. Thus the moral earth bears 
evidence of its might}^ past, and in all its learning, and 
politics, and art, and religion,, say to us : " Here the 
giants have been. These are the paths trodden by their 
heavy feet." 

The Beauty of Homely Heroes. 

Art forgets that the beauty of graceful lines is not 
half so impressive as the beauty of that marked, that 
homely face, where the God-like energy of the soul 
fought the great battle of politics, liberty, or science, or 
religion. When we remember what might}" works they 
have done and at what a cost of purpose, we desire no 
longer to have the old heroes come to us in the likeness 
of girlhood, but in the deep lines of power and solemnity. 

The Old Baleful Theology. 

Our age must part companj^ with the baleful associa- 
tions of the old theology. A theology that unconsciously 
degraded the God it loved ; it must define religion to be, 



DAVID SWING. 169 

not a belief, but a piety ; it must look up to God and 
from the Father, Son, and Spirit draw down a religion 
with the greatness of God written all over it. It must 
hear that voice that created all things by the word of its 
power repeating the deep laws of his temple — a right- 
eousness that loves the true and good ; a faith that 
guides ; a penitence that washes white ; a love that em- 
braces the world ; a hope that adds eternity to time, 
paradise to earth, and a Christ the leader and inspiration 
in the midst of these doctrines, and then upborne by 
ideas so vast and so true the age may soon cease to weep 
that its temples do not bring it a higher civilization. 
We dare not make God a party to our petty warfare of 
creeds. We dare not employ Him in our inquisitions or 
in our debates over transubstantiation or legitimacy. 
He must be seen onl}^ as the Great God sitting upon the 
throne of justice, so lofty, so infinite, that a soul passing 
into his temple will feel that nothing but a pure heart 
can fit it for so sublime a worship. 

Jasper in the Rock of Poverty. 

Almost the whole column of great names stands upon 
the bed-rock of humble property. Our statesmen, our 
thinkers, our writers, our judges on the bench, our ora- 
tors, have all been born poor. In all the history of man 
the pursuit of gold has warred against the development 
of self. The rock of poverty seems hard and cold, but 
within it is jasper. 

Rivalry instead of Worship. 

It is now complained by public men, men full of fear 
for our country overrun by all forms of vice, that religion 
is doing little to purify the atmosphere that hangs like a 
cloud of doom over our nation. How far the Church at 
large merits such words of half soitow and half reproach, 



I70 ECHOES 

no one can tell; but we feel fully ready to say that the 
more the altars of human worship draw their light and 
inspiration from the character of God alone, and linger 
less around the ideas that come only from raan, the more 
rapid will be the ascent of the nation toward a higher 
life. Many an altar now exists to which the worshipers 
repair, not that they may find holiness, but may keep 
alive some ideas held by their fathers. A large part of 
church life is only a rivalry about systems instead of a 
humble worship of God. 

Faith, Hope and Will. 

Faith and hope are a great motive power of the worl d 
Along with a powerful will they cast the heart forward. 
But without faith or hope the will has no path for its 
mighty action. A large ship must have a sea to sail in. 
How shameful to launch an ocean-palace in only a stag- 
nant pond! So the will-power seen in man begs for the 
ocean of faith and hope. Such machinery, such masts, 
such canvas, demand that the sea be deep and the voyage 
long. lyife has always been compared to the sea. Accept- 
ing the figure, let us declare that faith and hope are the 
winds that blow over it, not only carrying our vessels to 
all the ports of the mighty nations, but ruffling the 
waters, making them sweet and beautiful. Faith comes 
into Christianity from the general outside experience 
of mankind. It did not originate in Christianity any 
more than eloquence originated in politics, or color on 
the painter's canvas. Eloquence journeyed into the 
political life because great themes lay there to be devel- 
oped, and colors lingered with Titian and Paul Veronese 
because they held in their brains the sutject, and in their 
souls the taste that could weave into matchless beauty 
the gaudy pencils of light. 



DAVID SWING. 171 

The Wills of the Rich. 

The wills of the rich are thus only penitential tears 
falling over a misspent life, telling us not how gold 
should be employed after one has gotten a million and 
stands by a grave, but how it should be administered 
when one's cheek is still in bloom and the star of the 
soul shines out in its first magnitude. 

The Bible Definite and Indefinite. 

The Bible is the most indefinite of books in the delinea- 
tion of forms, and the most definite of all books in point- 
ing out the reward and punishment of virtue and vice. 
Its baptism is obscure; its righteousness is most evident. 
Only a small precise and trifling argument can find 
Presbyterianism or the Episcopacy in the Bible; but a 
broad, visible, noble argument, points out the Savior of 
mankind. It is only a microscopic analysis that can find 
in that book the world's "Confessions of Faith," but the 
human soul can not read a page in the book without hear- 
ing a whole sky-full of angels saying, "Blessed are the 
pure in heart." The manner of baptism, the time, the 
manner of the Trinity, the last analysis of Christ, the 
presbyter or the bishop, all these and a thousand more 
ideas lie in the Bible in utter neglect, because the God 
whom we worship has no preference here. He cares not 
what man finds in the holy writings if he only finds virtue. 

Wendell Phillips. 

The world is being pushed forward by the actual 
friends of the beautiful, the good, the true. The army 
arrayed for war need not be half as large as the army 
arrayed for peace. Some men are made for attack. 
Wendell Phillips was fashioned for war against slavery, 
but his tongue was made eloquent by all those millions 



172 ECHOES 

of whites who had worked out and expressed all the 
manifold good of libert3^ In order that an age may see 
slavery in all its social imperfections it is necessar}^ for 
the same age to see the natural outcome of all culture 
and freedom. While the poor slaves are living the kind 
of existence which reason would disprove, it is necessary 
for some part of the community to live that high intel- 
lectual life which reason would ask society to prefer. It 
was the fact that millions of men and women were living 
such a personal, free life that made it possible for Mr. 
Phillips to be eloquent. He was indorsed b}^ a great 
fact. He was rescued from theological dogma and from 
obscure metaphj^sics. He was only the utterance of his 
age. He stood upon a positivism which knew little 
doubt, but the war of the orator was no greater than the 
long peace of the people. 

What Overthrew Slavery? 

What overthrew slaver}^ ? Some will recall at once 
the great abolitionists ; but those fighting intellects will 
form onh^ a part of the true reph^. That institution fell 
before the patriotism of the centur3^ In the former 
periods slaves did all the manual work of the world. 
The men who were born free were all idle. The}' soon 
became the victims of vice. What libert}" there was in 
classic Rome soon ended in a corrupt manhood. In 
those long 3'ears there were no orators against human 
bondage because the opposite of bondage had never been 
fully wrought out. After the blessings of freedom had 
been fully revealed by the human life in England and 
New England, it was not difl&cult for a new oratory^ to 
come. It was the result of a new phenomenon in human 
experience. 



DAVID SWING. 173 

A Vastness of I^ove. 

Pass from the Decalogue to the political career of 
Moses, and there the same vastness appears, only it is 
not a vastness of intellect, but of love. He led a large 
multitude tenderly, as though they were his children. 
By day he advised, and cheered, and guided them ; by 
night he wept and prayed. 

The Pulpit Knows but I^ittle. 

The pulpit knows no more about man's nature, origin, 
and destiny, no more about God and heaven than is 
known by the lawyer or editor, the carpenter or the 
blacksmith. The human race is now so old that what 
information its wise men possessed in early times about 
the Deity has become widely disseminated ; most perfect- 
ly mixed into the average minds of any given age. 
When a few drops of some red substance are let fall into 
a bottle of transparent water, the color retains its isolation 
for a few moments, but time and motion diffuse the 
crimson, and at last the transparent water is gone and 
the deep red is gone, and the volume of fluid is all one 
uniform pink. Thus time and tumult have made us all 
alike in our religious knowledge and ignorance. The 
ages have shaken the bottle of knowledge and we are all 
of nearly one color of ignorance and wisdom. 

The Old Slave at Goat Island. 

Upon Goat Island in the Niagara, upon a Sunday, 
years ago, I found, hidden away at the root of a tree, a 
servant from the hotel, reading in his Testament about 
the crucifixion. He was an old emancipated slave. 
Upon being questioned as to whether he loved that pass- 
age above all, he said he always cried over the idea that 
for even black men a Christ should have died. I won- 



1 74 ^ ECHOES 

der whether any of the formulas of men about that death 
could ever entice from a slave's heart such a tribute of 
weeping. Here a humble fugitive slave came to fulfill 
the image of Tenn3'son: 

All subtile thought, all curious fears, 
Borne down b}^ gladness so complete, 
He bows, he bathes the Saviour's feet 
With costly spikenard and with tears. 

Roses of the Heart. 

To one or two spots in Central Africa beauty has in 
truth come. But it did not spring up behind the recent 
expedition because there was not in that expedition no- 
bleness enough to sustain anj^ roses of the human heart. 

Beauty in Darkest Africa. 

Beauty in Darkest Africa waited for truth to come. It 
followed just as the rainbow follows the sun. In the 
settlement of BlantjTe around a church of Jesus Christ 
stand man}' neat homes, stores, schools, and shops of in- 
dustry''. Along with these great thoughts and truths 
came climbing roses for each house, great beds of gera- 
niums, blooming street, and shadj^ avenues of orange 
trees; all the result of the noble truth and love stored up 
in the true missionaries of Christian religion. To few 
spots in Central Africa has this beautj^ come, because 
the most of white men have invaded that land in the 
capacity of heartless adventurers and have not taken with 
them any truth that could ever turn into music or plant 
a vine by a window. 

God is l/ove. 

A large part of the time of all the philanthropic, 
religious writers and speakers is spent in the effort to 
prove and illustrate the goodness of God. All who 



DAVID SWING. 175 

attempt to speak comforting words to the poor, or the in- 
firm, or the unfortunate, or the dying are often weighed 
down with the wish that they could possess some argu- 
ment or fact which might compel an instantaneous assent 
to the idea that God is an infinite love. That old search 
for an elixir which would keep man from dying h^ 
failed so long and so utterly that it has been wholly 
abandoned. No one any longer expects to escape that 
final frost which in the long past has touched and 
silenced so many hearts. Some years ago Mr. Bancroft 
wrote to a public man and friend : ' * Being more than 
four score years old, I know that my release (from labor) 
will soon come. Conscious of being near the shore of 
eternity, I await without impatience and without dread 
the beckoning of that hand which will summon me to 
rest." Such a thought passes at some hour through 
each heart. No one expects to escape the beckoning 
hand. The human family having failed to find a spring 
-or a divine dewdrop or a magical plant which might 
render man immortal. The next best medicine it seeks 
is some assurance that God is love. The alchemists 
have handed man's tears over to the theologian. Science, 
unable to dry up those tears or to analyze them, hands 
the sufferer over to the care of those who believe in a 
supreme creator. 

Obedience to I^aw. 

All the forms of life created in and for this world were 
made to move in obedience to certain laws. The bird 
must have the appetite and the undipped wing. The ox 
must have the field of grass. The fish must have the 
water for its home. All these simple forms of existence 
assure us that man, too, has his ways of being, and 
while knowledge will point it out to him all these God- 



176 ECHOES 

made paths, liberty must permit him to move into them 
and along their entire length. When a nation closes 
these paths it is not the friend of man ; it is only an 
enemy. Such nations have been made, not out of the 
philosophy of mankind, but out of absolute power. 
They stand as monuments of the place where humanity 
fell. The most of thrones have stood in memory of 
desolated races and centuries. 

Relations involve Duties. 

All relations involve duties. A citizen, a father, a 
friend, a painter, a poet, must confess duties that spring 
up from the peculiar qualities that give him the special 
name. 

Nationalism. 

Nationalism being such a pre-eminent idea, that will 
be the true and good nation which shall open and keep 
open the most gates of good to all its citizens. A glance 
at Selkirk in his island will inscantly convince one that 
the design of a state is helpfulness. Its purpose is to 
throw around each citizen all that a mind needs. If a 
mind needs learning, music, eloquence, wisdom, art, 
science, house, furniture, protection, the nation is a vast, 
almost omnipotent, committee of ways and means to the 
desired ends. 

What a Vision for Isaiah and John ! 

Could all the worthies, from Isaiah to St. John, have 
drawn aside the veil of the future, and have seen what a 
mighty part in far-off nations their words were to play ; 
could the prophet have heard the Christians of the nine- 



DAVID SWING. 177 

teenth century reading his word picture of the Redeemer, 
and could St. John have seen millions in the coming 
America poring over his fourteenth chapter, they might 
eaisly have endured all possible sorrows in view of the 
harvest in religion to wave on far-off shores. But before 
them lay the clouds that always shut off the future. 
They saw not the sublime reality. They walked in the 
solemnity of darkness, and as one by one they came to 
death, their mighty souls fed not upon sight, but upon 
the heroism of a lofty faith. As Washington's heart 
often sunk in the days of the Revolution, and as another 
President in our more recent trials often found the heav- 
ens dark above him and piteously prayed for help, so we 
know that at times the saints of the New Testament 
must have looked with sadness into each other's faces 
and have wondered whether just beyond the tomb Jesus 
would indeed come with His Paradise. And especially 
must these solemn thoughts have come crowding into 
the heart when upon the next day death was to come by 
the fagot or the axe. 

Full Permission to be Educated. 

To have full permission to acquire an education, per- 
mission to work and use the money which work brings, 
to have full access to nature, to books and art, to be free 
to point a telescope at the stars and learn whether the 
earth moves, free to study electricity as a Franklin, or 
the steamboat as a Fulton, or history as a Bancroft — this 
is that infinite privilege called liberty. It is too great to 
be defined, because to measure it, it would be necessary 
to enumerate all the blessings of all times. As the eagle 
must be free to use its wings, so man must be free to use 
his soul. lyiberty includes all the utility and beauty of 
our race. 



1 78 ECHOES 

Christmas a Supplement to the Arts. 

Christmas is a great supplement to the arts. It gathers 
up a world of beaut}^, which had to be passed by all the 
Angelos. Marble and cameos could not contain it all; 
music could not express it all. Art can not express the 
children which wake before light and wonder if it is too 
soon to get up. Art can not delineate beauty in the 
darkness. Art is careful about high lights. It can not 
deal with a room in which not even a candle burns, and 
where the waking child can not distinguish a chair from 
the spirit of Kris-Kinkle. Music can not gather up the 
sounds of such a midwinter morning. Beethoven held in 
his brain a grand power, but it was not broad and elastic 
enough to take in the shouts and laughter and gratitude 
of these December hearts. What can music do with the 
sounds of little feet upon the morning stairs! What can 
music do when the child opens a box and finds in it the 
blessing it had requested the Christmas angel to bring? 
The greatest move along grandl}^, but they omit more of 
human life than they express. As the architects builds 
cathedrals, palaces, theaters, and capitols, but do not 
construct the little home whence issue a I^incoln or a 
Burns, or a Franklin or a Shakespeare, nor the manger 
or the cottage of a Jesus, so all the arts combined are 
able only to touch the shore of man's world. They do 
not live with him and gather up all his thoughts and 
emotions. Christmas gathers up a thousand spiritual 
charms which the proud art pass by. It is a beautiful 
Ruth gleaning in a field where the sheaves that are left 
by the reapers are as numerous as those that are gathered. 



DAVID SWING. 179 

The Arts. 

It would be a great loss to the heart if truth was limited 
to only the decorations of the four great arts. Archi- 
tecture can utter a few words only in the name of religion; 
the sculptor only a few; the painter only a few. Music 
can say more than any sister art; but, after all the 
musicians have used their many tones, much remains still 
unexpressed, and the mighty ideas of religion must look 
to still other forms of language. The language of the three 
maternal arts is small when compared with that language 
the mind and heart can speak through words and actions. 
What can architecture, sculpture and painting do for our 
children, or say to them? Can those arts see them wake 
in the morning to find what the reindeer and sleigh may 
have brought them in the night? Can the common arts 
laugh and play with the young? Can they rear an ever- 
green tree and make it bear such rich gifts as to weigh 
down the graceful branches? Can the sonatas or the 
orchestras build a Christmas fire? Could they touch 
November with a blest anticipation and make the snow 
of December change that month into something more 
beautiful than May? Christmas came slowly as a much- 
needed decoration of the broad truths which pass along 
under the name of mankind and religion. 

The Highest Utterance of Atheism. 

A most pronounced and active Atheist printed these 
words last autumn: "Chemistry is the only and true 
God. No, this also is not God; it is chemistry. It 
moves worlds, systems, oceans, rocks, trees, men, society, 
commerce, all." "There is no God! There is no agent, 
being, or God exterior or superior to the world. It is 
eternal, self-acting, self-existing and self-sufficient." 



l8o ECHOES 

Such is the very highest utterance of all atheism; but 
inasmuch as all chemistry begins its task in the infinite- 
esimal atom, the mind which adopts it is forbidden to use 
higher than its fountain. Atheism thus begins and ends 
in an atom, and while logically not superior to Deism, it 
it infinitely below Deism, in its mental and emotional 
affiliations. 

God Cares Nothing for the Minutiae of Worship. 

Much of the indefiniteness of the Bible comes from the 
fact that God cares nothing for the minutiae of human 
worship. There is nothing definite in the Bible except 
the picture of Christ leading man to virtue, because the 
greatness of God forbids that He should care for aught 
beside. To suppose the Creator of the universe to have 
a choice between immersion and sprinkling, to suppose 
the Almighty to be partial to a posture in prayer, to 
suppose Him to have a choice between a government of 
bishops and a government by all the clergy, to inquire 
whether the Infinite One loves better the robes of the 
priest or the plain dress of the citizen — this is to degrade 
the name of God and to drag worship down to the level 
of a court etiquette. 

Washington. 

Washington did not discover or invent Washington lib- 
erty. Humanity had dreamed of it and toiled toward it in 
all history, but the thrones had the money and the soldiers, 
and the people were hurled back as often as they assailed 
the throne. But after the late three or four centuries 
had made a more general distribution of education and 
wealth, the hurling back of the people became more and 



DAVID SWING, l8l 

more difficult. The thought in the common minds 
became deeper, and their blows heavier. Out of each 
conflict of late times the throne emerged shaken and 
weakened. 

The Modern Girl's Indebtedness. 

The modern girl is indebted to her nation for her 
language, literature, art, and religion, even for the 
roses on her cheek and the height and purity of her 
forehead. It has been this inexpressible value of na- 
tional life that has made the citizen of all times willing to 
die for his country. 

livery Heart Has Thoughts. 

The men who are reported as having boasted that they 
have not been in a church for thirty years because no 
preacher knows more than they themselves have already 
in their own brains, have in some manner escaped that 
pleasure which comes from having some one take the 
trouble of summing up for us what we already know. 
Kvery heart has thoughts, but they often become un- 
strung or stored away and neglected. Along comes 
some one with the peculiar taste and the patience that 
can call in all these lost thoughts and make them sing 
again their sweet music in the mind. 

All Mind in One. 

It is not necessary to ask the Bible whether man was 
made in the image of God, for we know this without any 
aid from an alleged revelation. There can be only one 
kind of mind in all the universe. There can not be an 
intellect which might say that twice two are three, or 
that parallel lines will cross each other at last. All mind 
is one. 



l82 ECHOES 

Woman in Japan. 

In Japan the condition of woman is one of such sub- 
jection and such general degredation that no public man 
or local poet or dreamer can see anywhere any high and 
noble womanhood. The problem of that land would be 
to find the first part of the new fact. 

Truer Thoughts of God. 

We do not see the character of God changing from 
generation to generation, but we do see the human race 
rising in its power to estimate the sublime facts of the 
w^hole kingdom. A race which has doubled over and 
over again its estimate of music and all beaut3% ^1- truth 
and liberty — shall it not reach, step by step, abetter 
portraiture of that vast mind which created all things? 
When you look back info history you perceive that once 
God was power. How He could smite the Amonites and 
the Amalekites ! How in Greek thought He moved as a 
dark fate ! How in the Roman religion He thundered as 
Jove ! How in Calvin's time He was still awful in 
wrath ! But in late years the human mind has advanced 
toward a higher estimate of its own virtues and just so 
far to higher estimate of the Deity. 

We Can Not Escape the Great Problem. 

No one need turn away from the idea of a God because 
the thought seems hopeless in its vastness and many- 
sided mystery, for there is no other thought that promises 
an}^ smoother way for logic or any more peace for the 
heart. We can not escape the problem contained in man 
and the world. Man and the world are both here. 



DAVID SWING. 183 

Danger Ahead, 

Weary of asking what is creation ? what is life ? what 
is religion ? what is beauty ? the living multitude finds 
its happiness in the phenomena of the actual being, 
actual beauty, actual religion and existence. Under its 
conduct there may be indeed some mistake but it takes 
the world for better or worse, for richer or poorer. 
There is danger now that the great enemies of wrongs 
and vices will grow so conspicuous that they will hide 
those who 'are toiling upon the postive side of civiliz- 
ation. Those clergymen are valuable who are assailing 
the gamblers and the many swarms of men who live by 
plundering the people. Bold, useful men are these 
preachers in whatever city they may live and fight, but 
they must not conceal from us those who are presenting 
daily the postive side of all good society. The gambler's 
table, the den of infamy do not concern all the millions 
directly. Unhappy world if it had no profession except 
that of the doctor I for we are all laboring under disease ; 
and many v/ho are ill expect to be out in a few days. 
Doctors are demanded by the bad days of the few, but 
what must be said about the well days of the vast mul- 
titude ? Thus the assults on gamblers and on the prize- 
fights between men and between brutes are not to be 
thought the measure of modern progress. 

The Task of Author and Orator. 

A large part of the task of each writer and speaker is 
to tell men and. women what they already know and 
have nearly forgotten. 

The Bible All Glorious. 

With the great public heart for its interpreter, that 
book stands to-day all glorious in its kindness and light. 
The common people come to it not with their elaborate 



184 ECHOES 

systems, but with their sins that need forgiveness, and 
their sorrows that need a cure. The theoretic scholars 
approach the Bible as critics, desiring to build up a 
theory or tear down one, and the skeptical world at large 
reads it only as a lawyer weighs evidence ; but what we 
call the humbler classes, scattered all through the wide 
land, living here in a cabin, there in a cottage, or acting 
as servants of the rich, or sailing in ships upon the sea, 
or swinging the axe in the forest, come to the Book at 
times because the issues of life and death are there. By 
the time this numerous multitude shall have reached a 
higher intellectual development, the present form of 
skepticism will have passed away, perhaps, and there 
will be thousands of citizens who will never have suffered 
from its blight. The basis of doubt is always changing. 

An Infinite and ^Eternal God. 

An infinite and eternal God is only one more of these 
intellectual difficulties, and inasmuch as time and space 
although intellectually impossible, rise up before us and 
around us as emblazoned facts, thus the idea of God can 
easily lift itself up out of the dark sea of the mysterious 
and arise the richest, greatest fact of the entire realm of 
truth. Those who have been on a storm^^ ocean at mid- 
night and have gone upon the deck to feel the awful 
darkness and solitude of the hour, have felt as though no 
sun could ever rise upon such a vast black mass and 
make the scene one of light, each billow a thing oi 
grandeur, each w^ave-crest the lace work made by the 
fingers of the joyous light. Thus man in his dark night 
of many limitations may feel that no God is near or can 
come near so much flesh and dust, and yet in the long 
hour of doubt He is near, just ready to rise up before His 
children. If atheism cannot remove our logical difficult- 



GAVIib SWING. 185 

ies about time and space, why should it ask us to yield 

to any intellectual difficulty regarding our God ? If our 

mental pains are all transcended by time and space we 

should much more expect them to be transcended by the 

doctrine of a God. But, as in space we see the tree 

stand, the bird fly and the clouds float, as in time we hear 

our clock strike or count our heart beats, so in religion, 

living or dying man may rest his head upon the bosom of 

God. The incomprehensibility of God is no barrier in 

the way of human faith and love. As the infinite of 

time does not debar us from accepting as a blind reality 

each passing day so the infinite of the Deity need not 

cast a shadow of doubt upon the fact of such a heavenly 

Father. 

Christ a Wide, Deep, Moral World. 

Christ is a wide, deep, moral world. He who finds 

only one idea or one beauty in Christ, is one who should 

find upon earth only one plan, and in the heavens only 

one fount of cloud or light. It is an injurious human 

weakness if we say Christ is divine, and then feel that 

we have found all this divinity in the atonement or in 

the resurrection. Thus have we put Deity into a narrow 

cell, too narrow to be even fully human, much less 

divine. That which we call divine must overflow. It 

must not run like a rivulet, but roll like the sea. There 

are myriads of persons who cannot accept of Christ as an 

atonement, but who are drawing the guidance and the 

hope of life from His words and actions. There are 

others who identify Christ and the Father, and are 

blessed with this nearness of God ; while there are 

others who feel that Christ is only a super-human being, 

but who undergo an exaltation of character by following 

this lofty ideal. I^ittle children find in Christ an image 

of their own spirit. 



l86 ECHOES 

So I/ong! and Yet so Ignorant. 

It seems almost incredible that man lives so long in a 
world without knowing what the world is or what he 
himself may be. He reads that God made everything 
beautiful in its time, but he does not state what God is, 
or what beauty is, or what time is. But he emerges 
from this cloud of ignorance and affirms that the un- 
known God has made every unknown thing possess its 
unknown beauty in its unknown time. Oppressed by so 
much ignorance, the Berkeley school of philosophers 
declared that nothing exists except mind ; that what 
seems an external world is onl}^ the creation of a mind 
that is living as in a dream. Nearjy all the civilized 
millions accept of the daily phenomena as facts, and are 
content to rest in the common assumed realism of beauty 
and of absolute days and 3^ears. The fact that the in- 
finite is beyond man's reach must net prevent him from 
dealing with these pieces of the infinite which lie before 
his feet. Man in his world is as the early settlers on the 
Mississippi, who enjoyed and used the river without 
knowing about its mouth or its fountains. They used it 
as a great passing reality. Without knowing all, they 
detected the difference between the river and the land, 
and built their boats for the one and their wagons for 
the other. We do not know what beaut}^ is, but we do 
know that it is unlike ugliness ; that the eight notes do 
not sound like the other noises of the world, and that 
the face of the Madonna is unlike the face of the ape or 
of the African bushman. The fact smites our heart 
with resistless power, and we are glad to say that God 
made the world and filled it with a tendency toward the 
beautiful. 



DAVID SWING. 187 

The Justice of Jesus Christ. 

The justice of Jesus Christ is that justice of which the 
tragedies of Shakespeare are a faint image, and which has 
been reflected in the laws of states, and has always been 
imbedded in the soul. Oh, sad day for the Church and 
for human virtue when the teachers of Christianity turned 
away from the broad and simple Christ and asked the 
metaphj^sicians, and monks, and fatalists, to give them 
a detailed map of the Infinite One. A Roman priest not 
long since permitted a convert from Protestantism to 
bury his infant along with the Protestant dead if he 
would enclose in the little coffin a lump of consecrated 
earth, to guard the little Catholic soul from sharing in 
the Protestant hell. So the little holy earth was placed 
in the coffin to come between the infant and divine wrath. 
And a few weeks since Archbishop Purcell, in speaking 
of a railway workman killed in an accident, who had, 
being a Protestant, lived happily with a Catholic wife, 
said that the children of that poor widow were not only 
fatherless, but were doomed to predition at last, for 
Heaven could receive only the families of the purely 
Catholic. 

Christmas and the Children. 

Christmas rallies its brilliant troops around the cradle 
of Christ. It is not certain of the cradle, but it is certain 
about the happy element in Christianity. It is enough 
that one was born who took little children up in his arms 
and who would have taken up all the children of all 
places and all ages could His life have been lived every- 
where. He did not know those little children. He 
blessed them only because they were children. There- 
fore, all the children of all times share in that bene- 



1 88 leCHOES 

diction. It falls upon America just as it fell upon Judea. 
No child need live by these lakes or in the lonely 
prairies without hearing the same voice saying to it : 
" Come unto me. No one dares forbid you." When it 
is remembered that such an invitation implied an escape 
from sin and tears, an passing into a life of usefulness, 
and a final ascent to heaven, it mUvSt be confessed that 
the birthday of such a friend should be ushered in with 
many a ringing bell, and many a song, and with the 
joyful shouts of the faithful millions. 

The Church the Moral Hope of the I/and. 

An enforced reading of the Bible would only make its 
pages absolutely hateful to Catholic and Jew and 
skeptic, and thus as legal power should come to the sup- 
port of the book, its intrinsic moral power would pass 
away. For many reasons the Bible will be withdrawn 
from the public schools as rapidly as any religious 
opposition may demand such a withdrawal, and in a few 
years the Church will remain the chief moral hope of 
the country. 

Why Not Accept a Deity? 

Why not most cordially espouse the assumption of a 
Deity ? The greatness of such a Being is no hindrance 
to faith, for the universe does not teach anything else 
than greatness. Having seen the ocean in peace and in 
storm, having seen the sun and moon encompass our 
earth as marvelous lamps, having learned that the sun 
has been flinging out light and heat for millions of years, 
having learned that there are millions of such suns, per- 
ceiving that man is a mind that can study such a uni- 



DAVID SWING. 189 

verse and can trace, measure, and weigh these distant 
orbs, the heart need not expect the God of such a scene 
to pass alone in the likeness of a man or a bird, or even 
an angel with wings. How can the mind turn from a 
half-hour of thought in astronomy, in whose heavens are 
seen gigantic worlds whirling in space like insects in a 
sunbeam; orbs a million miles in diameter and lighting 
up systems as an electric lamp lights up a little library 
or bed-chamber; orbs in the light of which a moral and 
thinking form of life can read a book at the distance of 
ninety-five millions of miles from the lamp — how turn 
from globes which run fifty or a hundred thousand miles 
an hour, and yet carrying gently the trembling dew- 
drop and the waking or sleeping forms of life; orbs which 
perhaps support a human race on their bosom, and never 
change their speed a second in a thousand years — how 
turn from these things and expect God to be anything 
like the ruler of a city or a sacred cow of the Bast or the 
sacred reptiles of old Egypt ? It is necessary that the 
creator of such a stupendous scene should transcend all 
thought and move before man a perpetual depth and 
height wholly immeasurable. 

Auguste Comte. 

This generation is a positivism, but it adds to the cold 
data of August Comte the warm world of sentiment 
and religion. It moves away from theological assump- 
tion and from metaphysical obscurities, but it confesses 
the religious sentiment and the sentiment of beauty and 
right and wrong to be just as real as the rocks and hills. 
Some forms of religion may contain falsehoods, but 
religion is real ; some things of alleged beauty may be 
ugly, but there remains in the world a real beauty. 
These facts compose the motive and the consolation o. 



190 KCHo:Es 

our times. Religion, politics and social life are studying 
them just as patiently and hopefully as ever inventors 
pursued the study of mechanical powers of nature. All 
are attempting to master and love the positive side of the 
world. 

Ignorance of the World. 

The common practical mind knows nothing about 
God's world. It moves about in the market place, and 
stands in its shop all day and all year, utterly incapable 
of thinking of the whole heavens and the whole earth. 
It knows the numbers of its own family and the value of 
certain articles in the market. But along comes the man 
with imagination, and lo, the universe opens its gates to 
his foot. His heart wanders off into the eternity past and 
to come. He becomes a Newton or a Herschel in astron- 
omy, or a Humboldt in science, or a Cousin in morals, 
or a Milton in poetry. Among these place the men who 
wrote the book of Job or the Psalms, or the glowing 
rhapsodies of Isaiah and Kzekiel. Who in our day could 
surpass these voices in the richness of their imagination 
and in the sublimity of their song ? 

Religion Must Work by l/ove. 

Religion, from its very nature, must work its way 
forward only by love. Its power lies not in legislatures, 
but in persuasion, and the more gently the Bible comes 
to people's homes and to the children, the more divine 
will the book appear. 

The Torn Page. 

A youth just learning to read and love the wonders of 
the printed Imes, found by the wayside a page torn from 
some volume. He read and came upon name after 



DAVID SWING. 191 

name, and thought after thought, but all was injured by 
the fact that he had only a page. The story aroused 
him, but all that awakened interest only changed into a 
youthful longing and unrest. After months he came 
upon an old man who told him from what grand poem 
the page had come. The book secured, the heart found 
its peace and perfect joy. Thus have you all found some 
middle pages from some unknown book. Even the long 
life of George Bancroft was only a single chapter from 
some great volume. All that you can each do is to read 
well and lovingly your pages found in the great field, 
and then wait calmly for the coming of someone who can 
open before your joyful eyes the whole richly wrought 
volume with its complete story of man and his God. 



If Christ were Here Now. 

' 'What would Christ do were he to live and act in this 
city ?" The question is fair, because it simply asks what 
our whole world most needs. The man of Nazareth 
would make a wonderful revolutiou in our world if he 
should persude us all to live up to our knowledge. If 
the mind believes in temperance, in justice, in benevo- 
lence, in industry, in perfect honor, in physical and moral 
beauty, then all that remains is to make each day over- 
flow with the obedience of these rich truths. Christ 
would be a divine friend could he do away with the 
distance between human philosophy and humanlife. He 
need not check the understanding. He need only help 
the heart to catch up. The matchless beauty of Jesus 
lay not chiefly in the ethics which was stored in his 
mind — an ethics so perfect, so universal, so divine, but 
it lay also in the f^zt that his philosophy did not outrun 



192 ECHOES 

his soul. His oratory was the photograph of his life. 
His voice was like the murmur of the sea, which is not 
nearly so great as the sea itself. His words were few, 
his conduct vast. We reverse the picture and follow our 
gigantic philosophy with a microscopic life. And yet 
the fact that we excel the negroes and the Indians proves 
that when the mind climbs to a height the heart also 
creeps up out of the valley. In the Son of God the in- 
tellect and the soul were companions. They were insepar- 
able. The wreaths for the forehead of Jesus were wreaths 
for the heart. Great men like Emerson and Whittier 
and Gladstone are persons in whom mind and heart are 
both one. In Jesus the thought could not outrun the 
love. 

How the Greeks I^oved Greece. 

The Greeks loved their own state to such a degree 
that citizens thought it a matter of reproach to visit any 
outside land. To the polite Athenian foreign travel was 
a disgrace, unless the journey were made on some 
business account. To go abroad was to confess the 
imperfection of home. That magnificent breadth of 
brain and affection that grasps a whole human race, bond 
and free, high and low, is first seen in the great mission- 
ary to the Gentiles. 

A Thousand Blessed Years. 

The holy writers said those blessed years would be a 
thousand, but we see the poetry of the specified number, 
and at once transform the period into a gigantic future 
of earth, and into an immortality beyond. So slowly 
moves God's law that when this better day shall dawn 
none of us will be here. Your youngest children will be 
in this planet seventy or eighty years from to-day, and 



DAVID SWING. 193 

will see much more of beauty and virtue than has trailed 
rich colors along before our eyes so soon to close, but 
beyond the graves of our children God's law wfll go on 
strengthening the intellect and awakening the nobleness 
of the heart. We can all be happy elsewhere. Not by 
magic, not by earthquake, not by tempest or fire will 
the thousand happy years come, but as education and 
goodness steal over man all his life, and neither his 
mind nor heiart can feel or hear the footfall of those dear 
angels, thus the thousand happy years will come 
through God in his law, and come as silently as those 
violets which in the spring the earth sends up from her 
bosom. 

The Angel's Will and Judgment. 

The tens of millions of ruined youth in the world now 
show that God does not often come to a life that has 
neglected itself. God sent His angel of human will and 
human judgment before Him, and He loves to enter the 
heart, not that rejected His messengers, but that re- 
ceived them. 

Calvin Did Help the Millennium. 

We all stand amazed that our era passed through eigh- 
teen centuries without happening upon those great inven- 
tions and discoveries that are now so useful and so grand; 
but we should be more deeply amazed at a Christendom 
that could live through eighteen hundred years without 
having learned that Christianity is an imitation of Jesus ! 
Calvin cannot hasten the millennium. The Romanists 
and the Protestants cannot compel its morning to push 
back the curtains of night. Those great streaks of dawn 
will come when the human soul shall take up the sermon 
on the mount and transform it into life. Nature is 



194 ECHOES 

a great believer in life. It transforms earth, air, water, 
and light into blossoms and buds and millions of living 
forms ; so it comes to the ideas of Jesus and flinging 
them into the soul commands them to live. It will not 
have any other result than life. 

Young People of the Past Injured. 

The young of the past have been deeply injured by a 
philosophy which informed them that they possessed no 
power, that they must seek some day a divine over- 
shadowing that would in an instant change their natures 
and set them out upon the new career of saints. Under 
the influence of this blight our youth have assumed them- 
selves to be powerless, and have drifted along in every 
foll}^ and weakness, expecting the Deity to come and 
remake them. 

Clergymen Must be I/eaders. 

The clergymen in their pulpits must be also leaders in 
the thought and work of the State, because being in the 
service of the King of Kings thej^ must make every 
village and city worthy of their Monarch. A drunkeii 
man, a starving child, a slave, an ignorant mind, is a 
disgrace to the beautiful Empire of God. 

Achilles Trembled before Jove. 

While the Indian millions and Chaldean millions were 
drawing their morals from the assumption of a God, the 
Greeks and Latins were preparing to take up elsewhere 
the same belief, and to express it both in song and in 
philosophy. Homer's poem opens with the picture of a 
holy prophet walking upon the sea-shore praying for a 
justice above human justice. The Achilles, whom no 
battle-field could alarm, feared the wrath of the king of 
Olympus. 



DAVID SWING. 195 

*'I/ord Bacon Uttered more Wisdom than He I/ived." 

The scene now before us is that of a much larger intel- 
lect and a slightly improved heart. The intellect always 
was in advance of the heart. Men know the right long 
before they will perform it. Mental power comes long 
in advance of the moral power. In our city of a million 
not one person in the whole million believes that such a 
metropolis should be governed by men of an infinite unfit- 
ness for the task, but such men are chosen from time to 
time because the universal intelligence is many years in 
advance of the public morality. We all know what is 
right, but our moral force is a long distance behind our 
judgment. In no age have knowledge and action trav- 
eled together. Lord Bacon uttered more wisdom than he 
could live. So did Shakespeare. His forehead was in the 
clouds, his character in the mire. The intellect of Goethe 
won laurels which were never flung down in the path of his 
life. All these men, joined by thousands as great, recall 
the old reproach flung at Athens. That it had wheat and 
moral laws, but the wheat alone it could use. Athens 
could eat better than it could live. The youth says: 
"Drinking is a bad habit, but give me another glass." 
So our intelligence says: "All cities should be governed 
b}^ great men, but for the present bring on your thieves." 
Thus the intellect grows great more rapidly than the 
heart grows powerful. The virtues of which Bacon and 
Shakespeare sang began to come long after the writers 
were in their graves. The intellect can fly, virtue goes 

on foot. 

** How I l/ove Thy I^aw ! '^ 

The admiration of the psalmist, who cried out, "How 

I Love Thy Law ! ' ' should undergo great enlargement 

in a century that has found how vast and sublime is the 

empire of this beneficent legislation. 



196 ECHOES 

invents Come Slowly. 

When the heart is so susceptible that all the winds of 
earth, even the softest whisper, waken music amid its 
strings, then the greatest days of this life are passing. 
They may not be the most powerful days in actual 
events. Events come slowlj^ But they are the most 
powerful days in all those qualities that produce events. 
The actual harvest is alwa3^s far awaj^ from the sowing 
time. Indeed, the harvest comes toward the fall of the 
year. It stands close by the autumn leaf. But the days 
that made the harvest began far back in the March and 
April rains. So the noble events of life come, perhaps, 
in full or late manhood, but they are only the ripened 
fruit of a tree that put forth its leaves and blossoms long 
before, .when the noble atmosphere of youth lay around 
the spirit. The young, looking at all the illustrious ones 
of the world, and marking that they are standing in 
middle life, feel that thej^ can hope little from the pre- 
sent, as it still is too far awaj^ from great action. Fatal 
mistake ! That middle life so full of honors is only the 
place where the stream of youth empties all its long- 
borne treasures. Middle life is the place where the 
torrent of the heart tumbles into the sea. 

Byron and Franklin. 

Here a grand ideal will be found composed of two 
things — an integrity toward man and God, aud then 
some idol of this life. Follow it, and 3^ou will find re- 
ligion as to God, and a glorious life-pursuit as to earth. 
Byron held to only one-half the vision. But he made 
a gigantic world out of that half. His ideal never 
moved from its place. The Scotch reviewers could not 
extinguish or eclipse the star. Wherever the unhappy 
lord went, his harp was in his hand, and all the world of 



DAVID SWING. 197 

beauty, all the seas, all the mountains, all the joys and 
griefs of mankind, came to him to be blessed with the 
immortality of song. Before Franklin stood the dream 
of wisdom and knowledge. Before all who have ever 
reached a valuable distinction there has stood a future 
full of a light that has never once gone out. With these 
two lofty heights before the eye, the height of morals 
and of personal development, life cannot be a failure, 
end where it may, in middle years or in old age. 

A Day in June. 

As the approaching day in June tips first the moun- 
tain tops, and then by slow advance, reveals the leaf up- 
6n the highest branches of the tree by your window, so 
the light of immortality, falling down from the sky, 
strikes first the loftiest hearts, and though they be few 
in number, and though a sinful multitude lie in ignor- 
ance and vice at their feet, yet, upon these lofty ones 
you may see falling the white light of immortal life. 
I<et us call it Heaven, and place Christ in the midst of 
the approaching scene. 

The Stream of Public Morals. 

The stream of public morals has thus come down from 
far-off influences. It has overflowed the vales of human 
life. This sacred water has flowed to the altar where the 
bride has stood, where the child has received baptism, 
where the dirge has been chanted for the dead. It has 
given spiritual life to the statesman, images to the poet, 
eloquence to the orator, joy to the honorable, fear to the 
wicked. With the fear of God removed^ whence shall 
come any more this great overflow of a stream so grand 
dignified as a religion ? What was that human race whose 
memory was all the immortality the good man might 



igS ECHOES 

desire? Alas, for their argument, this stream of life 
which so touched that school had been made beautiful in 
tne temple of religion. Out of that sanctuary had come 
Seneca with his high philosophy. Aurelius with his 
virtue. St. Louis with his prayers. Beatrice with her 
beaut^N* of soul, Dante with his poetr}', Angelo with his 
subjects. Massillou with his eloquence, the orators with 
their rights of man, the Church with its charity. If the 
worship of man be indeed so noble it is unfortu- 
nate for atheism that religion had to come first and create 
such a charming humanitv. And vet such is the 
dilemma. Into that web of life so loved b}- the followers 
of Comte. religion. Pagan and Christian, has interwoven 
its many beautiful threads. The human race, so beauti- 
ful, had made its charming toilet in the temple of the 
gfods. 



C) 



How Good Men May Disgrace their Souls. 

The Disciples, indignant that a certain Samaritan 
village would not receive their Master, asked permission 
and power to rain down fire upon the unbelieving nation. 
Christ refused their request, and informed them that they 
were disgracing their own souls b}' uttering or cherish- 
ing such a wish. They were ignorant of the unworthi- 
ness of the nature that could exult in such a rain-storm 
of fire. In the mind of Christ there la}' a different ideal 
of man's dut}' and pleasure. 

Civilization the Mitigation of a Hard I^ot. 

Having come to the end of a whole year of chaotic 
public and private affairs the heart must find its consola- 
tion in the general thought that in working his way for- 
ward from barbarism man cannot escape difficulties. 



DAVID SWING. 199 

Barbarism is itself a supreme hardship; and very slowly 
does this severity pass away. Civilization may be called 
the gradual mitigation of a hard lot. When we perceive 
the imperfections of our country, the great unhappiness 
of some of its millions, our hearts would break were it 
not for the reflection that civilization has always been a 
slow advance toward betterments. We must be thankful 
for what good we have reached and must labor diligently 
for more happiness. We must resist to the uttermost 
all crime, all violation of law, but we must be tender and 
just to all those who believe they can make our race less 
miserable. If in this sincere faith and effort persons 
should choose to walk a few hundreds or thousands of 
miles they have a right to march, carrying with them 
their favorite ideas. It is not essential that their ideas 
shall be good; it is essential only that the holders of them 
advance unarmed and in the name of perfect personal 
honor. 

Jesus Christ Touching the Inmost Spirit. 

So there may be spirits living and dying unaffected by 
the Son of Man, but when we seek for an influence that 
is molding deeply the heart, we find it here in Nazareth. 
Whether Mr. I^incoln repeats his poem. 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 

whether Macaulay, dying, wishes to take the sacrament, 
whether Payson prays, or Bunyan dreams, whether a 
child commits itself to God at night, or a Cranmer sees 
Heaven through the light of the fagot, it is all one scene 
— that of Jesus Christ affecting deeply the inmost spirit 
of man. 



20O ECHOES 

New Truths Rise Slowly. 

The educated, broad, deep thinking young men of the 
orthodox ministery must not expect the great massive 
church to move around like a feather in a breeze. The 
new truths must slowly rise, and the old doctrines must 
slowly fall. The broad men ought to be not only satis- 
fied, but delighted with the mental and moral progress of 
the church in the last twenty-five years. Into that old 
sanctuary which once hated, scolded, hanged, burned, 
exiled, tortured, and damned, a love of man has come 
step by step. The church has almost discarded Christ 
as an avenger, to love him as a Savior. No twenty- 
five years, not excepting that group of days around Jesus 
himself in Judea, have brought to our world such an ad- 
dition to human friendship and human rights. We may, 
indeed, all be sorry to see the orthodox bodies condemn- 
ing here and there an individual, but these condemna- 
tions are mild in their quality and are thus fading away, 
and with the fading quality the quantity will soon also 
decline. 

An Absolute I/ife Impossible. 

No soul can live an absolute life. Each person in this 
assembly is three or four thousand years old. Not only 
were the features of the modern face wrought out in 
France, Germany and England, but there also the soul 
lay and took its shape of sentiment. Our souls are 
vases into which the past poured not its ashes, but its 
faith. Hence, what atheists there are in the present are 
not standing up in a moral or a mental greatness all 
their own, but in a consciousness and conscience gradu- 
ally fashioned in days where the mothers bowed in 
prayer, and where all the music and eloquence of Chris- 



DAVID SWING. 20I 

tiaiiity molded the sentiments. The customs and maxims 
of life surrounding the atheist of to-day are not customs 
and maxims of his own, but of the theism in minds and 
hearts that have come down through the atmosphere of 
a piety and have been colored in its religious hues. The 
atheists of to-day are, therefore, not the results of the 
worship of humanit}^, but they are still the results of a 
history that has every where been full of the Supreme 
Being. A man may reject the creed of yesterday, but 
he cannot reject its influence any more than he can com- 
mand his forehead to become low or his intellect to go 
back to the stolidity of the times of King Alfred. 

Fields Drenched in Blood. 

Taking the world all over death by violence has been 
the most popular amusement of all the past epoch. The 
Indian was not the only one admired for the scalps he 
had dangling at his belt. A similar ornament bedecked 
the temples of Caesar and Bonaparte. It was at the edge 
of our century the death of a neighbor began to lose its 
charm; but all these fields which surround our city have 
again and again been drenched in blood. Within our 
historic period there were thirty-seven Indian tribes on 
this continent. That is, there were always thirty-six 
chances of war each year for each tribe. The living 
tribes must have been few compared with those that were 
blotted out by battle and massacre. Then came the white 
race. I<ike the red man it came with blood on its hands. 
It hastened on the New England shore to make trouble. 
The harsh winter gave no little pain; but it did not satisfy 
the great Christian warriors who had come over in three 
ships from the European battlefields. So they began to 
kill some red men and to steal their hidden corn. In due 



202 ECHOES 

time our ancestors had all the trouble they could carry in 
their hearts. It was alwaj^s thus with the white man. 
While the red man was dying out in the West the black 
man was coming in the South, and not on his account 
did trouble stay away. As sparks shoot upward from the 
fire, so troubles arose when white met black. It was 
sadder than when white met red. 

The Disciples Amaajed. 

The * ' liberalism ' ' has been in the world so long that 
there must be something real and tangible about it. In 
a most unexpected moment it came from the lips of 
Christ when some of his impetuous disciples wished him 
to check some men who seemed to be acting as Christians 
without having received a direct commission. To the 
amazement of the disciples, we doubt not, Christ com- 
manded that they be let alone, for they were doing some- 
thing for the kingdom. They had a desire to serve the 
Master, and that desire was too valuable to be checked 
by any rebuke. 

Climbing Mon Blanc 

While the mind thus meditates over the world as being 
cumulative in its genius, it must apply to itself the 
philosophy it finds for church and state. Our active and 
red- cheeked youth do ;iot possess all the good of this 
planet. They indeed step with light foot and light heart, 
but their soul lacks volume. Bach new year, if not 
was ;ed, will more and more change the few rain-drops 
into a great, roaring shower. The entire scene widens 
day by day. I^ife is much like going up the slope of 
Mon Blanc. As the traveler ascends leisurely, new beau- 
ties rise up, one beyond the other, until his heart at last 



DAVID SWING. 203 

holds all the villages and homes, all the streams and 
forests, all the gardens, all the colors, and all the happy- 
peasantry that are grouped in a mass of beauty in the 
vale of Chamouni. 

" I/iberalism as Old as Thought." 

No doubt ' ' liberalism ' ' is as old as human thought. 
From what we see in the history of Athens and Rome 
there must always have been men in each period of the 
world who were busy protesting against certain old 
forms of custom and idea. Indeed, this is not a matter 
of conjecture. From old India, full of despotism, there 
arose poets who sung of liberty. In Greece, full of the 
polytheistic idea, there arose minds that declared the 
Divine Unity, and for a more spiritual worship. 

Tears. 

The truths and feelings of life come one by one. 
Tears come easily in early life, but they do not mean as 
much as they mean at thirty or fifty. And love and 
admiration come easily when life is not far from the 
cradle, but they do not sweep the soul as they do later in 
the human pilgrimage. To the child the earth and sky 
are attractive, but they are not so clothed with mystery 
as they are long afterward. Children love music, but it 
is the older heart that weeps in answer to all touching 
strains. In youth the heart hates easily and without 
cause ; as years pass hate is crowded out of the soul by 
the growing truth and beauty of an infinite humanity. 

Christ in our Highest Buiotions- 

I claim that Jesus Christ has entered deeply into all 
the lines of emotion and intellect that now so adorn our 
century. You Christians meet to-day to commune with 
Him! It is well. But He communed with your country 



204 ECHOES 

and your literature and your arts long before you came 
upon the scene of action. He began to 'shine into the 
human heart long ago and re-shape it. He fashioned the 
holy hj-mns which our fathers sang. He stood by when 
the Catholics created the Gregorian chant, and where the 
Covenanters sang their psalms in the wilderness. He in- 
vaded the realm of poetic thought, and turned divine 
genius away from the adulation of bloody generals to the 
stud}^ of nature and its Creator, the soul and its destiny. 
He has communed with all the centuries since His Ad- 
vent, and has penetrated them with a purer, loftier spirit. 
Mother and child have knelt in pra3^er bj^ His example 
and request; the mightiest intellects have shaped their 
philosophy in the light of Christ, and the old and the 
dying have tried to go away from earth with some of this 
Saviour's words upon their trembling, blanching lips. 

An Bditor May be a Statesman. 

If a statesman be a personage fully wedded to the 
welfare of the people he can be aided not a little by a 
belief in the infinite Potentate — the King of Kings, be- 
cause that idea is so royal that it can lift up the trusting 
mind and make God's children upon earth seem dear and 
great. The sublime King exalts the subjects. Inasmuch 
as in our century the printed thought has become an 
equal of spoken thought the true statesman may talk to 
his nation through printed words. An editor may be a 
statesman, because his press may become a forum and his 
audience-room ma}' become larger than the crumbling 
Colosseum; but he must consecrate his life to great truths 
and deem all else useless. Where the power of the State 
is held in the voting people the statesman can be the men 
in the shop and on the farm. 



DAVID SWING. 205 

The Nation Has no Soul! 

The Nation has no body, no soul; it cannot walk or 
run; it has nothing but its laws and the power to enforce 
them. It is like a great steamship which cannot do any- 
thing except cross an ocean. But noble is the ship that 
can thus master the sea. We expect as much of our 
Nation: that it will always perforrn its solitary but 
gigantic task. It stands for what millions of its citizens 
fought for, thought, and enacted in their best hours of 
goodness and reflection. 

The Attic Philosopher. 

In a little volume, ' ' The Attic Philosopher, ' ' the poor 
little girl Paulette has a wall flower blossoming in a green 
paper box. Her garden was a little piece of a roof in 
Paris. There her plants had to grow in boxes made with 
her own hand. There the sun could peep in at times, 
and there the rain had to mix itself with soot and dust 
and half kill the plants it ought to nourish. What a 
miracle of grace and beauty could the taste and love of 
Paulette have been transferred from that roof to some 
valley of the Seine or the I^oire! The child's heart would 
thus have been led out of its distress into a broad place 
where there is no straitness. 

Holding Fast to Truth. 

If a young Presbyterian, or a young politician, or 
young electrician, or a young Methodist, or a young 
musician has some new truth he must extract his first hap- 
piness from holding fast to it himself. His second happi-. 
ness must come from seeing others hold on to it. It was 
a great joy to Archimedes when he alone knew a certain 
truth. He sprang out of his bath with joy saying: "I 



206 ECHOES 

have found it." Thus each heart should at first be happy 
in its own truth, and then wait for the little plant to 
grow. There should be no surrender to the outside 
multitude. The opposing multitude will grow smaller 
as the days pass. The multitude that holds an error will 
all at last melt away like the snow. 

I^aw l^verywhere. 

Laws appear everywhere. We find them in the domain 
of beauty. They forbid the architect to put a small col- 
umn under a mighty dome, and will not permit him to 
sacrifice power to beauty. They command the painter to 
care for nature and not to make wheat ripen in the snow 
and not to make the robbins sing in the leafless trees of 
Christmas. They issue orders to literature and tell it to 
exclude debasing ideas and to admit the truths of most 
value and of greatest application. They issue orders 
to religion and tell it to create in humanity the 
most possible of virtue and hope. Appearing at all other 
points of thought and action laws spring up in the State 
to help the public hold what justice and progress it may 
have found. These laws our marching citizens must 
respect. All damage done propert}^, all disregard of 
American rights, the rights of individuals or of corpora- 
tions must be instantly checked, because the law of the 
land is the progress we have made in the ages up to this 
date. With that taken away we fall back into the abyss 
of barbarism. Our Nation, may or may not have climbed 
very high from its barbaric starting point, but it must 
hold what it has gained. Our laws of property have been 
passed by the millions acting in their best hours; they 
must not be set at naught by bands of itinerants acting 
in their bad hours. 



DAVID SWlNCr. 207 

Religion Has Become Beautiful. 

You will find that not only is Christ pouring into 
the soul the great democratic idea that is blooming now 
into new and beautiful rights of man, but that Christ 
has waked in the bosom a group of other feelings scarcely 
visible when the world was young. Religion has passed 
from the terrible to the joyous, from the horrid to the 
beautiful. The heathen tortures himself with knives ; 
the Christian of our day sings words and music, the 
sweetest that the two arts can produce. The Chinese and 
all the pagans kill at times innocent little ones as an act of 
worship; the Christian mother clasps her infant to her 
bosom and whispers prayers over it, mingling prayers 
and tears. The heathen philosopher doubted and steeled 
his heart to his fate; the Christian philosopher beholds the 
city that hath foundations, and walks calmly down life's 
decline. 

The Broad Churchman. 

The Unitarian who cannot at times worship with the 
orthodox because of the errors in the book of the latter, 
has degraded his liberalism into a narrowness, for its 
mission being to find and love the general and lasting in 
thought, it is compelled to mark and love the general 
and lasting in the human soul. The truly broad church- 
man can worship in all temples, for as musical tones can 
be heard further than unpleasing sounds, so the divine 
parts of the service only will reach his spirit, his soul 
being too far upward to be reached by the notes that are 
discordant. 

Party Names must Die. 

As die these two words, Unitarianism and Universal- 
ism, so other church names are falling into decay. No 



2o8 ECHOES 

sectarian name holds to-day the meaning and fame it 
held a hundred years ago. Even the word Jew is rapidly 
parting with its old significance. It would be unreason- 
able to expect a term like Jew or Universalist to perish 
in a day. Customs and prejudices do not perish by an 
explosion ; they disappear like the Arctic snows. Those 
snows once reached South to the Ohio, but the sun has 
smitten the margin until it has uncovered the fields of 
Indiana and Illinois and Canada. Thus old names of 
churches w^ill die, not by violence, but by the melting 
touch of a new era. In England the name of Church- 
man or Episcopalian was once so tall and pompous that 
all other alleged Christians were little better than in- 
fidels. Their services were "meetings" and their build- 
ings not "churches," but "meeting-houses.". This 
treatment given by the establishment inflamed the zeal of 
the Wesley ans, and Sydnej^ Smith says the Wesle3^ans 
had on some lake or stream a steamboat built for carry- 
ing nothing but Methodists. The same culture that 
keeps the caste of India out of the Western civilization is 
extracting all the old significance from the names of the 
sects, and is offering to them instead the simple word 
Christian. 

The Potter's Clay. 

When the potter's clay first falls upon the board it is 
only a lump ; an hour afterward it is seen standing forth 
an elegant vase, with lines the most graceful conceivable 
in human taste. So man set forth in life only a lump of 
mind ; the subsequent years point out to us a noble 
Greek or German or Englishman. To bring about such 
results, the wheel has been turned a long while, and the 
molding hand has for centuries pressed heavih" and 
lightly by times. War and peace, climate, the presence of 



DAVID SWING. 209 

great individuals, the longings of the soul, self-interest, 
vanity, ambition, the love of money, the love of man, 
and the love of God have all entered into the great 
pottery, and have given the shape and then changed the 
shape of all the clay children that have come and gone 
on the world-stage. 

A I^aw in the Spirit. 

Paul says there is a law in the spirit that reveals the 
Infinite One, and that on this account all souls are re- 
sponsible for the conduct of life. Now this inner senti- 
ment, in its power, which has always surpassed its infor- 
mation, has peopled the air with divinities, crude, feeble, 
great, or monstrous, according to the surroundings of 
the brain. A faculty or an instinct does not include the 
right use of the faculty or instinct. The sentiment of 
music in the soul did not involve the immediate discovery 
of the piano or the arrangement at once of a symphony, 
but involved only a long struggle and a long period of 
littleness. The religious feeling in the soul thus strug- 
gled along, and in the first years of its strivings saw gods 
in every storm, and in ever}^ ray of sunshine, anl in all 
the shadows of the night. Paul says God so made the 
rational world that they should " seek the lyord if haply 
they may feel after him and find him. ' ' All the mytho- 
logical and theological phenomena of the past are mani- 
festations of this feeling after the true God. 

The Imperishable Ideas of Christ. 

But ;.£t us pronounce the name of the one mighty in 
tellect which, more than all others, has sown in the 
Church the seeds of this harvest, of poisonous plants as 
some sa}^, but of golden grain indeed destined to be the 
food of the future ! L<et us pronounce the name and then 



2IO ECHOES 

ask those whose bosoms are full of alarm to call him 
"infidel," or "destroyer!" The name ! The name! 
Ah ! here it is — Jesus Christ of Bethlehem ! There is 
the fountain whence roll the transparent waters of this 
broad philosophy. Far beyond all beings who have 
ever lived Christ was the broadest. His ideas are all 
imperishable. He cast out the temporary that had come 
down from Moses; He made the old iron-bound Sabbath 
die in the field where the sweet wheat was ripening; He 
saw the human soul in Lazarus, in Magdalen, in little 
children; He rebuked the disciples when they desired to 
draw the sword of their sect; He uttered few of the ideas 
that enter into the modern differences between denomina- 
tions; He preached a discourse, every word of which falls 
not upon Judea, but upon the whole earth; a sermon 
under which all men have written the word "forever." 

How Theologians Travel. 

The intellect of the church always travels in the 
oxen's cart. We need not find fault with that mode of 
travel. What better intellect you and I possess came to 
us in that kind of a vehicle. The men of India who 
came hither to tell us that our souls will mitgrate at last 
into some other animal came by steam over sea and con- 
tinent. They ordered dinner by telegraph. They called 
a carriage by the telephone ; but their creeds and attach- 
ments did not make any such quick movements. The 
inventions are all for the bod}^ and for physical property 
and not for the soul. Even the Congress at Washington 
assembled by steam ; but when the science of the nine- 
teenth century had gotten them together it could do no 
more for them. When a Congressman rides in a car a 
mile a minute he will at the end of his journey have no 



DAVID SWING. 211 

more intellect than lie had when he started. The theo- 
logians of Princeton travel in steam cars. 

l/ove for Half- Visions. 

We must love the grand half-visions of this world. 
Like Moses, being unable to see the face of the Almighty, 
we must be content with the rustle of his flowing gar- 
ments. Unable fully to measure the Christ, let us 
say, 'Here is the only incarnation within the realm of 
evidence, and here the quality of the being is such that 
reason may forgive us and faith commend us if we say, 
Truly this was the Son of God." 

Waiting for a Fact! 

One of the Roman writters said, ' 'Even our children 
no longer believe in our divinities. ' ' One of the prayers 
of Pliny was ' 'for a new consolation, great and strong, 
of which he had not yet heard or read." A lyatin sage 
said, "I need a God who can speak to me and can lead 
me." Dr. Arnold finds somewhere in the writings of 
Aurelius ' 'that he was sad and agitated, stretching out 
his arms for something beyond." Cicero had declared 
that "the Academy could prove nothing." The Roman 
Empire had all forms of greatness except religious faith. 
Weary of legend, cultured beyond the credulity that 
believes without evidence, the Roman Empire was ready 
for an advent of fact. In the man of Nazareth the dim 
gates of mythology were closed and the gates of evidence 
were opened. Here was One that could speak to the 
multitude, and the hem of whose garment might be 
touched. Here was One who could say "blessed" to 
the unblessed crowd, and whose feet a Magdalene might 
bathe with tears. Here was One who could feed a mul- 
titude in the wilderness, who could comfort the dying 



212 ECHOES 

and the living, and could allow a mortal like John to 
rest against His bosom. 

** The Sound of Many Waters.'^ 

The readers of the Bible find in places far apart that 
beautiful phrase, "The voice of man 3^ waters." The 
early men and women of our race loved nature, not as 
ardently as we all love it, but yet deeply enough to 
make it a source of happiness. Happiness is an indefinite 
term. It is like gold in this, that if one has not a million 
or two of its dollars, then a half million or a tenth of a 
million will be a great comfort to the heart. Thus the 
ancients were happy, often in the presence of nature. 
We do not know exactly how much delight they found 
in the scenes and sounds of the external world, but the 
most cultivated possessed quite a fortune of this kind. 
Each red sunset, each bright day, each morning birdsong, 
each opening spring brought pleasure, but perhaps not as 
much joy as now comes to humanity from the same 
external objects. The growth of the human mind is the 
growth of all beauty, for the universe, having come from 
an infinite God, will unfold always as man shall unfold, 
and will never fail to give new joy to each new age. It 
will be as infinite as the mind itself. 

The Blending Christ. 

The real truth is, Christ has blended himself with all 
the annals of Christian lands, and has given new color to 
all the da5^s of the great era that wears His name. As 
the setting sun shining through a watery air makes all 
things — fence, hut, log, forest, and field — to be gold like 
himself, so Christ blends with the rich and the humble 
details of society. 



DAVID SWING. 213 

I^otiely Hours. 

The Psalmist had said, "Clouds and darkness are 
round about Him." What the modern spirit experiences 
as an occasional flow of melancholy was the constant 
feeling of all the noble ones of antiquity. Many of the 
most excellent sought death, because it was supposed to 
be an end of sorrow; a sweet, dreamless sleep. What our 
poets dream of in lonely hours, most of the old sages 
carried about all the while in their hearts: 

Would this weary life was spent, 
Would this fruitless search were o'er, 
And rather than such visions, blessed 
The gloomiest depths of nothingness. 

Such a poem shadows forth the occasional sadness of 
the present, but the almost universal darkness of classic 
Rome. 

Noah's Dove with a I^eaf. 

It is only a garden or a field, and the earth is inhab- 
ited only by our mother and the home group ; but to the 
educated mind in later life a wonderful world has come 
and the mind fluctuates between sadness and inspiration. 
The great exposition of a year ago was composed of 
little pieces of the world. It was only Noah's dove with 
a leaf. Here was a bit of architecture, here a few pieces 
of painting, here a few statues, here some jewels, here 
some strains of music, here some channels of water, here 
some strolling hearts, but from these pass to the vast 
globe, from our lagoons pass to the Rhine or the Nile, 
from our visitors pass to the human race and the scene 
swells to vastness. If that hint of our world was so 
attractive what must the world itself be ? To meet the 
demand of such a world the heart and mind must be 



214 ECHOKS 

cumulative. The soul must never be impatient to run 
fast, but it must never stop. In politics, in religion, in 
social reform, it must work and hope. It must feel that 
all truths will gather volume. What are these truths 
here for ? Is it that they may perish ? Are the sciences 
here that they may die ? Is astronom}^ here to fail ? Is 
the geometr}" to become false ? Is stealing ever to be- 
come a virtue ? Is honest}^ to become a vice ? Each 
truth is the presence of God. His omnipotence and 
omnipresence are in it. Bach moral truth will therefore 
grow in our advancing world. When we listen now to 
the sounds around us there are touches of discord, but 
we must all work and be patient and think of that future 
of both earth and heaven when all sounds will combine 
in a rich music, and where the voice of the world will be 
like the deep voice of many waters. 

Job, and Dante, and Milton. 

The person who wrote the book of Job was one of those 
poetic minds that are liable to appear in Italy as a Dante 
or England as a Milton. Before the eye of this ancient 
the ills of the spirit are pictured as the ills of the external 
scene. A.s Dante's personal troubles took the form of a 
wandering in a strange woods where a leopard and lion 
and a wolf were passing to and fro before him so this old 
writer compelled the external landscape to express the 
troubles of the sufferer's private life. His hero is seen as 
in some dark or narrow ravine or in the midst of rocks, 
flints, and thorns, in some dreary, horrible place, and yet 
in a world where Mercy would have been glad to lead 
him out of the distress to a broad, open country where 
there was no straitness. The old poet and the later one 
may have had in mind the straits into which man gener- 
ally falls in his bad dreams. In such dreams we are 



DAVID Swing. 215 

always in the narrows. If there are not walls or ditches 
or fences or floods then there are weights to the feet or 
other kind of impediment. As contrasted with all such 
distress how blessed is the broad open country ! The 
poets, early and late, assure man that he was made for a 
wide career and would grow happy as rapidly as the 
scene should widen before him. Coming from an infinite 
mind, man contains within himself a preference for the 
ocean as compared with a pond, and for a boundless 
prairie as compared with a square yard of dirty grass in 
the heart of a great city. 

Unitarians Unhappy Over their Name. 

And now at last a time has appeared when the name 
of Calvinism or Wesleyanism has become more of a 
burden than a joy. Once each of these church names 
was a source of happiness to the church that bore it, but 
they have at last become empty of such pleasure. Hun- 
dreds of church names are getting ready to fade away in 
the general term of Christian. The special term of 
Methodist or Presbyterian or Episcopalian has served its 
first purpose, and will always be hereafter a picture of 
the past rather than an active, living creature. The 
Unitarians are particularly unhappy over their name, for 
even if Christ were something less than a God it could 
not well harm a mind if it believed that he were a deity 
in fact. A church might have been formed so as to make 
it optional with a Christian to think of Jesus as a human 
being. To declare Jesus to be human was irrelevant. If 
our statesmen should declare in favor of a silver dollar 
they ought still to permit the country to make coin out 
of gold. So if many thought Christ to be only human 
there should have been an ample welcome offered to any 
who might think him divine. But the Unitarians so 



2l6 ECHOES 

idolized silver that they insulted the old gold. They 
should have stated clearly that their purpose was to make 
silver only a part of the ornament of the sanctuary. 
What that body of Christians now seeks to create is a 
Christlike character. It does not care how Godlike 
humanity maj^ become. It will never again file au}^ ob- 
jections to anything divine, either in Palestine or 
America. It has learned that society does not need to have 
any of its ideas debased by a resolution. Christ becomes 
humanized rapidly enough without help from any 
theological convention. We need no enabling act. 

A Beautiful That Does Not Fade. 

The true Christian liberalism is, then, onlj^ the gradual 
coming of a time that changes not, of a beautiful that 
does not fade, of a good that turns not into a sorrow. The 
old Hebrew ritual became a burden. Its material objects 
became tiresome as soon as man grew larger within. As 
philophers love at last the pleasures of truth more than 
the pleasures of food and drink, so when the world 
reached development, it flung away the washings of hands 
and the killing of sacrifices, and worshiped the invisible. 
It took refuge in the spiritual Christ. Then the Roman 
age came with its higher externals, but again the world 
moved on in the great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. And ouw^ard it will still move. 

If We Knew God ! 

If we knew the nature of Deity as we know the nature 
of earth, air, and water, we might become very decided 
over this question of the Incarnation, and might declare 
the heavenly element present or absent as a chemist takes 
an ore, and after an ahal} sis declares the presence or 
absence of gold. It is not in human power thus to affirm 
and deny, over the great crucible of nature in which lies 



DAVID SWING. 217 

a soul. It is a little illogical, to state in its mildest 
form, for anyone to approach the historic Christ and 
declare the utter absence of Deity, for such a decision 
reposes upon the assumption that man knows what divin- 
ity is, as he knows the material elements. As in the 
theological kingdom, men are deemed arrogant who 
presume to know all about God and who will talk inces- 
santly about Three-in-One, so not wholly free from 
assumption are those who will hasten to declare Christ 
to be wholly separated from any element above the lofti- 
est human life. For mark the difficulty of the situation. 
No one knows w^hat God is. Hence, no one may hasten 
to affirm His absence or presence. 

Christ the true '* I/iberalist." 

He is a partial, a half-soul, who does nothing but de- 
bate over our dust. Christ is the true " liberalist, " be- 
cause He did not take refuge in silence or doubt, but 
boldly uttered His creed, and in such terms that it suits 
alike those of all times and continents. 

Be a I/ittle more Patient. 

It is singular how impatient man is with his neighbor's 
philosophy, and how very tolerant he is toward all be- 
lief that is dressed up in a foreign costume! If a Presby- 
terian comes along singing the story of Adam and Bve, 
and of Noah and his dove, and of Daniel and his lions, 
many persons in our community grow indignant and 
would exhaust upon these Calvinistic heads the stores of 
common abuse but, if a great, gaudy man from India or 
Arabia comes to tell how we were all toads once and may 
after this life become an elephant or a fish, we pay a dol- 
lar to hear the man speak and then after the lecture we 
want him to live with us for a week. If the Presbyterians 



2l8 ECHOES 

come along with the Old Testament we want to have 
them put in jail, but if Edwin Arnold comes along with 
his * ' Light of Asia' ' we call him a poet and love his sweet 
little tales as though the}^ were a part of history. The 
' ' Light of Moses ' ' has as much right to a hearing as 
the ' ' Light of Asia, ' ' and ' ' Orthodox}^ ' ' like Hindoo- 
ism, ought to pass along in peace all over our continent. 
The men who hold these many forms of thought are all 
one as our neighbors and friends. Their morality and 
goodness are made all one by the age. 

Thank God for our Altars. 

When a philosophic liberalism shall gather up the 
phenomena of church life as carefully as it seeks the 
general principles of religion, it will find much of its 
own breadth everywhere ; will find itself able to join in 
the service of Kpiscopalian or Presbyterian without any 
other feeling than that of gratitude to God that all over 
earth His children have an altar for their hour of deep 
worship and meditation. 

Our Moral World Has no Railway Speed. 

Our moral world is dragged by oxen. It has no rail- 
way speed. The railway carries men's bodies rapidly, 
but it never interferes with the old slow speed of the in- 
tellect. The clergymen who went to the last General 
Assembly traveled by the rapid car. They may . have 
received messages by electricity, but the car and the 
electricity did not impart any swiftness to their intellect. 

I^et us Walk Humbly. 

We must walk along in the light we possess here — 
the light of common evidence, an evidence woven out of 
history, experience, testimony, and out of the humility 
that confe'sses that God may, for aught we know, taber- 
nacle in the flesh. 



DAVID SWING. 219 

You Cannot Drive a Yoke of Oxen a Mile a Minute. 

The impatient soul will always make a false estimate 
of our race. Only the most painstaking heart can keep 
in mind all the facts of the world. He who drives a 
yoke of oxen must give up all hope of traveling a mile a 
minute. If he is impatient he must part company with 
those slow animals. But how faithful they are ! How 
heavy, how gentle, how obedient ; but oh, how slow ! 

Praying- for God and Rejecting- Christ. 

If, then, the whole human family has been grieving 
over an absent God, an invisible, inaccessible, formless, 
voiceless God, and has prayed that he would break 
through the impenetrable clouds and come near His 
children, it is a capricious logic that will then reject a 
Christ because the Deity cannot enter a limited world. 
A strange world, that will pray for a manifest Cod and 
then reject the idea of a manifestation ! Such are the 
difficulties that attend a peremptory rejection of the 
doctrine of the Incarnation, difficulties that may well 
open the heart to what evidence there may be upon the 
great New Testament shore. I am not ready to confess 
that God never would become limited by a body for the 
welfare of His children, nor ready to confess that He 
ever could become thus limited in a manner better, more 
impressive than in the person of Christ. 

The Son Of God. 

If God were destined ever to draw near the human 
sense, the best shape of that earthly residence would be 
such as our Christ. What more impressive Son of God 
need we await than He of the manger and cross ? Do 
we seek diviner words, or a diviner love or holier life ? 
I,et the superhuman come to us again and again, to 



220 KCHOES 

attach itself to these years of humility and sorrow, and 
the being that should carry about this mingled soul and 
mind would always be a Jesus Christ. Heaven and 
earth meeting could not but give us the Man of Sorrows 
and sympathy. The upper purity and the lower sin, 
meeting, could not but give us the cross. Such upper 
life wedding the shores of death could not but give us 
the resurrection. 

Presbyterian and l^piscopal Worshipers Much Alike. 

While devotion to the transient is an injury, a drawing 
of the heart away from the great, yet in our age the 
narrowness is larger in theory than in life, for with the 
exception of here and there an individual. Christians 
are holding to the small ideas with only a gentle grasp, 
and are daily becoming more and more heirs of a full 
emancipation. If you will select two churches of this 
city; if you will choose from the hundreds of sanctuaries 
two seemingly so far apart as the Second Presbyterian 
and the Grace Episcopal Churches, and will, by a care- 
ful analysis, examine the souls that worship at those two 
shrines, you will find no marked qualities that distin- 
guish between the two throngs. Coming from the same 
avenues and from the same conditions of life, the faith, 
and hope, and character, of the two groups are the same. 
Both trees will let fall the same fruit in the autumn of 
the grave. This resemblance comes to pass from the 
fact that only an ignorant age can be the perfect slave of 
minor ideas, and that in our century these two represen- 
tative congregations are children of only general truths, 
and are carrying along with them a diversity that is be- 
coming external, getting ready, like the chrysalis of the 
butterfly, to fall away and go back to dust, handing over 
the inmate to wings. 



DAVID SWING. 221 

Goldwin Smith. 

Unexpected famines or earthquakes, or wars, or con- 
flagrations will come and change a nation's drift. Or a 
single individual like a Luther, or a Savonarola, or a 
Bollinger, or a Napoleon, will come along, and by him- 
self alone change the page of history for a hundred or 
five hundred years. Goldwin Smith says beautifully 
that the scientific minds will always be able to analyze 
the sunlight and to explain the formation of clouds, but 
they will never be able to paint a sunset in advance, and 
tell us how the clouds will marshal themselves, or from 
what urns the colors will be poured out. 

Mere Denial a Poor Foundation for a Church. 

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries exact defini- 
tions in religion were as popular as statues, pictures and 
jewels. The man who could produce a good, strong 
doctrine was reckoned a genius. Seroctus was put to 
death for being a Unitarian. He and Calvin had made 
new doctrines and each bade fair to become as celebrated 
as Angelo or Raphael. But Calvin held the political 
power and he put to death his rival. Unitarianism was 
thus born out of an age that worshiped an opinion. 
When certain men happened upon the idea that Jesus 
was a man they hastened to found a church upon the 
idea, and must have been happy over the loss of a divine 
leader. They are not now so happy over opinions, and 
would not really care much if all the men and women in 
America should suppose the Son of Man to be also the 
Son of God. Unitarianism has therefore lost its early 
charm, and would no doubt love to reach some name 
that would imply simply the mental and moral advance 
of society under the Nazarene flag. A church cannot 
well stand upon only a denial of somebody's alleged 



2 22 ECHOES 

divinity. It can stand better upon the growing divinity 
of mankind. Orthodoxy has gained much by its having 
the more of God on its hands. The Universalists find 
themselves embarrassed also by a name. That society 
was created while the public mind was still fond of exact 
definitions as to all things that pertained to the spiritual 
universe. Reasoning from the goodness and power of 
God, and from the intercession and love of Christ, cer- 
tain theologians reached the conclusion that all souls 
would find at last holiness and happiness. The great 
river of human life was flowing toward a happy country. 
And so this thought and belief were called Universalism, 
and were made the basis of a new society. 

Those Who Seek Justice Should Be Just. 

There might be a marching army in whose flags there 
would be a profound significance. The heart can easily 
see a host of ragged and haggard women and children 
marching toward some legislature to beg for some new 
laws relating to the sale of costly and destructive drinks. 
Could these suffering families be assembled in some plain 
that would afford room for a few millions of sad mortals, 
perhaps the}^ could tell us with a new kind of eloquence 
that the time had come for the age to move a few steps 
upward — must carry a banner of holiness. The news- 
paper has much power indeed, so has the written petition 
signed by a half million names, but so would there be 
power in a milion upturned faces over which faces lines 
had been cut deep by poverty and tears — faces of children 
that had never seen any happiness — faces of women who 
had once been beautiful and joyous. But no such host 
was that which took a railway train by brute force; and no 
such host is that which drank and caroused by the banks 
of the Missouri. Men need not march in search of a 



DAVID SWING. 223 

higher law if they must pause in the saloons on the way. 
Men who go upon a holy pilgramage must carry a little 
of holiness with them. Men who make long journeys to 
plead for justice ought to carry with them not a little of 
that valuable article. The beggar who wears on his bosom 
the card: "I am dumb," should not talk much. But 
charity often displaces the intellect and makes women 
send bouquets to murderers, and to accept from a debased 
drunkard an offer of marriage; for charity is a rapid- 
sweeping sentiment, . while wisdom is a slow, limping 
thought. It is most probable that the troubles of to-day 
will soon decline and perish. The marching men reveal 
no definite aim and display no moral worth. In 1776 our 
fathers knew what they wanted. The army of Washing- 
ton knew why it marched and endured privations. The 
slaves of the vSouth knew why they often ran at night, 
toward the north star. When thf^ soldiers moved toward 
Washington City in 1861, they knew the nature of their 
errand. It is quite fatal to these troubles of to-day that 
these little armies need an interpreter. 

The Pilgrims to Washington. 

No defense can be made of that delegation which 
having set out to find at Washington some more perfect 
form of justice concluded they could travel best in a 
stolen train. Their idea that by trampling upon law for 
three thousand miles they could the better plead for more 
law is perhaps the most original idea for which an army 
of philosophers ever marched. Don Quixote rode over 
Spain to redress wrongs, but he was not crazy enough to 
make his benevolent journey on a stolen horse. If, 
however, any of these migrating groups are honest in 
their belief that they can make ideas impressive b}^ 
carrying them by the living human form they seem to 



224 KCHOES 

possess the right thus to wander. There is no law 
against the use of the public roads that may lead from 
one ocean to the other, but the rights of the road do not 
reach over into the fields. If the philosophic travelers 
find charity along the road the age dare not complain. 
There is alwa^^s a charity that will aid an army to go to 
the next tuwn. The daily papers are erring greatly in 
not finding out for the public who these men are who are 
tramping along toward the Capitol. We are informed 
that they are lazy tramps who love to be fed along a 
thousand-mile road ; that if well fed they would make 
the road wind all over the world in the temperate zone ; 
but the whole affair is so large and so serious that the 
people would rather exchange a great mass of guess 
work for a few facts. A few reporters traveling with 
these itinerants a few daj^s could learn the character and 
the ideas of the mass. Their character should be known. 
Are the}^ all idle men who would rather tramp in a body 
tha n move in the old isolation of one by one ? Are thej'- 
disciples of Henrj^ George, with hearts set upon pajnng 
land rent to the Nation ? Are thej^ Republicans going 
to Washington with some plea against hard times ? Are 
they Democrats on their way to tender to Mr. Cleveland 
some advice from the distant West ? In an age of tele- 
graphs, newspapers and indefatigable reporters, no analy- 
sis of these armies has 3^et been brought in. That each 
division contains idle and bad men is evident, but we 
should all know the dominant moral character of the 
crowds. While the public waits for the facts it may well 
marvel at the many experiences through which our 
particular spot of earth has passed. And each experience 
has been an advance. Here great seas of grass rolled 
many thousands of years ago. The climate was hotter 
then and made great coal beds out of its excessive 



DAVID SWING. 225 

vegetation. The wild animals were larger than the 
buffalo and the wild horse. At last the mound builders 
and the red man came, exiles, perhaps, from some conti- 
nent now lost. What a rude, sad thing were the mound 
builders' age and the red man's age! Murder was 
hardly a crime. It was not dangerous to the murderer, 
and not much of a loss to the one killed. The popula- 
tion could never have been dense, for there was no 
science of living. The only science that flourished was 
that of putting people to death. 

Music the Child of Christianity. 

There is an art which Christianity created almost 
wholly, asking little of outside aid. Music is that pecu- 
liar child. The long continued vision of heaven, the 
struggle of the tones of voice and of instrument to find 
something worthy of the deep feelings of religion, re- 
sulted at last in those mighty chants that formed the 
mountain springs of our musical Nile. There could 
have been no music had not depth of feeling come to 
man. The men who went up to the pagan temples went 
with no such love, with no sorrow of penitence, with no 
exultant joy. It was necessary for Jesus Christ to come 
along and transfer religion from the form to the spirit, 
and from an "airy nothingness" to a love stronger than 
life, before hymns like those of Luther, and Wesley, and 
Watts, could break from the heart. The doctrine of 
repentance must live in the world awhile before we can 

have a "Miserere," and the exultant hope of the Chris- 
tian must come before the mind can invent a "Gloria." 

Old World Blooms. 

As the lilies bloomed before the Savior pointed out 
that group of blossoms to his followers, so the mind and 



226 ECHOES 

soul of man began to bloom in the old world where Hiram 
worked in gold, where Miriam sang, where Job and 
David wrote, where the Greek orators thundered and the 
Greek poets sang. It is safe to saj' that the greatness of 
earth began, not with Christ but with God. We need 
not take the garlands from the Father to bestow them 
upon the Son. The grandeur of earth began when God 
said, " Let us make man in our image." Let us never 
set up such rash claims for Christianit}' that when our 
3*outh pass from childhood to manhood and womanhood, 
and begin to read books, the}^ will need to remodel their 
opinions and unlearn the lessons of earl}^ life, and thus 
run the peril of falling from a once childlike faith into 
the drear}^ land of infidelit}' or doubt. 

Caste in India. 
In India a man is made great or small b}^ his caste. A 
Brahman ma}^ all life long be a perfect blockhead, but no 
harm comes from that condition of intellect, for he was 
born great. People fall on their faces before him, not 
because he has anj^ sense or virtue, but because he was 
born great. Then it is in vain if a carpenter attains to 
great learning, for he was born miserable and must re- 
main true to his birth. Along come the Western nations, 
and men and women may all rise up to one class — a 
great humanit}-. Each individual ma}- draw strength 
from the whole world. The mind need not be oppressed 
b}' the narrows and wild beasts around Job and Dante. 
It may move out into the more boundless, open country. 
Man}' of the Christian churches of our da}' find them- 
selves embarrassed by the names which their ancestors 
selected and loved long ago. In the whole past mankind 
seems to have loved some form of personal distinction. 
The mind was too small to conceive of and love the re- 



DAVID SWING. 227 

semblances in our race; it was more fond of the differences. 
It was common and degrading to be a member of the 
human family; and.it was easy to claim some special 
feature of the intellect. 

The Word "God." 

The word God was used to atone for indolence of in- 
quiry or poverty of thought. Also superstition loaded 
down the sacred idea and kept the Deity before the world 
as the performer of all sorts of high and low tragedy and 
comedy. The modern study into natural causes has 
affected not a little the relation of a God to an event, 
and hence has perhaps given to the present a little more 
than its share of the materialistic spirit. I need not 
pause to argue the question whether absolute atheism is 
possible. I do not believe that the mind can ever reach 
a perfect assurance that there is no God. But there is a 
practical, or rather influential, atheism possible, and not 
only possible, but in our day such a non-belief seems 
passing beyond its former limited proportions. In view 
of the approximative atheism we now witness, it seems 
timely we should all ask ourselves and each other what 
would be the effect upon morals of a widespread dis- 
belief? 

The Natural World. 

Wonderful as the unfolding of the natural world is the 
unfolding of the world spiritual. The natural world 
is the schoolhouse in which we may, if we will, learn 
the higher truths of the moral universe. But as child- 
ren often sit in the schoolroom all through their early 
years unwilling to learn the lessons, longing for play or 
idleness, so we older ones pass our time in the great 
academy of nature with our idle eyes wandering far away 
from the valuable page. 



228 KCHOKS 

The Golden Rod. 

The plant called the golden rod abounds in America, 
but when we speak of the Constitution of the Nation 
that beautiful pl'ant is omitted. Without that yellow 
blossom the Nation could move on. Thus some denom- 
ination may be a flower in the field, but it can not be 
recorded in the philosophy of piety, for should that 
blossom cast all its colored leaves, on would go the 
great wheels of the Nazarene science. All the churches, 
be they a hundred or a thousand sects, must meet in the 
one end — the moral education of the unrolling race. 
Christ showed what hidden splendor lay in this earth, 
the task remains to educate the world and make this 
Nazarene beauty roll over all the zones of human life. 
An intellectual training will not suffice. That form of 
awakening must be accompained by a great study of 
moral beauty. State and church must combine in the 
one task of over- throwing vice. As artists look toward 
ideals, as all the arts are proud of their ideals, thus must 
the church and State combine in making more and more 
white the souls of each new generation. A government 
which permits a low literature to flourish, drunkenness, 
gambling and all vices to be the pleasures of its citizens, 
ought soon to die and become trampled over again by 
the feet of savages and the hoofs of wild cattle. The 
moral education of the people must more and more be- 
come the end of nation and church. 

Morals Born of Belief in God. 

The world's morals have as a fact descended from a be- 
lief in a God. However far back we look, the develop- 
ment of conscience and virtue is only a form assumed by 
the development of an idea of a Supreme Ruler. The 
human race has always placed in the heavens a standard 



DAVID SWING. 229 

of right and wrong, and has gazed upward as if to read 
there the path of duty. In the oldest records of Homer, 
or Moses, or Zoroaster, of Chaldea, Egypt, or India, 
there is to be seen a Being, above human, standing as the 
supreme right of the universe. The Vedas of the old 
Hindoos all overflow with this consciousness of a God. 
One of the sacred books says: " The great I^ord of these 
worlds sees as if he were near. A man may think he 
walks by stealth but the gods know it. If a man stands, 
or walks, or hides; if two persons whisper together, God 
Varuna knows it. He is there as a third. He who 
should flee far be3'ond the sky, even he would not escape 
Varuna the king. ' ' Such is the religious spirit of a liter- 
ature which two thousand years before Christ lay in ten 
large books spread out before an almost countless multi- 
tude of souls. While Abraham and his followers were 
looking up to Jehovah by faith, influenced by a celestial 
city that had foundations, while Jacob, in a dream, was 
beholding a ladder reaching from earth to sky with di- 
vine messengers upon the steps, the Aryans were moving 
across India with their hearts as full as Jacob's soul was 
with the presence of God and His angels. 

"Oh, How I l/ove Thy I,aw! " 
Read upon tables of rock the laws of industry, of will, 
of faith, of love, of justice, and cry out with the ancient 
worshiper, "Oh, how I love Thy law ! " He that erases 
one of these commandments makes of your soul a deserted 
house. It is full of joy and language and music no more. 
I speak not simply in the name of religion. All the hours 
and years of this life ask you to confess the supreme 
power of the will, of faith, of hope. You can not despise 
the mighty forces without becoming "as a house without 
inhabitant. ' ' Often have we seen within the boundaries 



230 ECHOES 

of a single heart an image that "deserted village" of the 
poet. 

Sweet smiling village ! loveliest of the lawn, 
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn, 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen 
And desolation saddens all the green. 

The Providence of lyaw. 

Having given up the providence of detached events we 
must all pass over to the providence of the law. The 
walls of despotism will not fall by blowing of horns; the 
schoolhouse bell has more potency. The Red Sea will 
not part for an arm}^; the growth of education and free- 
dom will dissolve the armies on the sea's banks and turn 
the soldiers into farmers or scholars. The sun will not 
pause over a battlefield; the age of the intellect will sow 
the battlefield with wheat and will ask of the sun only 
the regular rising and setting of summer and winter. An 
event uses God for only a day, but law needs God every- 
where and forever. With the ancients God was like a 
crash of thunder, an earthquake, but we have drifted into 
years in which God is like the light and the atmosphere 
— the perpetual accompaniment of man. 

O, Boasting Century! 

O, boasting century, question yourself thus: Do you 
fully believe in temperance? Do 3^ou act out your 
belief? Do you believe in kindness? Do you act 
kindly ? Do you read and write poetry on the beauty of 
simplicity? Do you declaim over the beauty of a life 
devoted to nature, to man, and to God ? Do you act out 
the philosophy of such simplicity ? Do you ask a friend 
to come and take a simple meal with you, and then do 
you and he sit down to a glutton's feast, and after three 



DAVID SWING. 231 

hours of excess rise with the body injured and the mind 
beclouded? O, boasting century, dost thou thus live? 
If so, the golden age will not come. It will wait until 
thou shalt have detached thyself from all this injurious 
and comprehensive lie. But when thy mortal nature 
shall become the companion of thy learning, then shall 
the flowers of paradise begin to bloom at thy feet and her 
sky to grow rosy over thee. 

History Full of Ruins. 

History is full of the ruins of empirer and cities. 
Could you sit down by each ruin and find the causes 
that brought it, only one report would come from 
Palmyra, or Thebes, or Babylon, or Athens, or Alexan- 
dria : "We violated the laws of life and are dead." 
Within their once-living hands and hearts the laws of 
industry, of morals, of social life, of political well-being, 
were broken and death came. If from any cause the law 
of gravitation should be broken for an hour by our earth, 
it would fall away never to run her beautiful circle again. 
The sun's fiery ocean would, in a brief period, receive 
the falling, unfortunate star. But the law of gravitation 
is only one upon the great statute book. The old nations 
have all fallen because they regarded not the mighty 
decalogue written upon their . rocks, their fields, their 
palaces, their homes, their hearts. The story of Moses 
is perpetual and universal. Kncamp where men may, at 
Sinai or in America, there is always a Moses coming 
with shining face carrying in his arms the laws of God. 
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. But it shall be well 
with the righteous. 

Dens I/ike Palaces. 

As those who live by the income of vice make their 
saloons and dens more and more like palaces that the 



232 ECItOKS 

youth may be made familiar with all those haunts-^ 
familiar through the omnipresent glare of a false beauty, 
so those who live in the name of some great but new 
principle must daily emblazon it before the world that 
the onlooking race may gradualh^ become familiar, not 
with a destrojdng vice, but with a coming virtue. The 
new idea must be met with in poetrj^, in prose, in ser- 
mons, in history, in philosophy ; and, at last, hearts 
long closed will open and admit the new and beautiful 
guest. 

A Universe Under I^aw. 

Some declare that the world seems less sacred and 
charming to them since science has brought in such an 
array of second causes between them and the marvels of 
nature, filling up with physical or mental forces a place 
once full of the Heavenly Father. But this disappoint- 
ment is destined to be only temporary, for as soon as the 
mind can become fully acquainted with the conception 
of a universe of law, it will find the old world of acci- 
dent or miracle a poor, small thing compared with a uni- 
verse all moving under law. 

"Wisdom Not Fickle. 

True wisdom is not fickle. It is not a time-serving 
truth. As Antigone in the drama gave her heart to 
those moral laws which were more enduring than the 
throne of Thebes, thus the genius of Christianit}^, more 
divine than Antigone, must give hei heart to principals 
more eternal than that of ofiering a lamb or an ox or a 
dove for the sin of a human soul. Paul exhorted his 
Roman friends to bring their own living bodies to their 
God, not their slaughtered forms, that this would be a 
logical service holy and acceptable to heaven. 



t)AVlt) SWINC^. 233 

A Golden Age. 

All we know in reference to a golden age is that the 
human mind and heart are growing larger and somewhat 
more virtuous. The crime and vice in society still make 
difficult the life of the optimist, but it is easy to believe 
that a little of moral success will make success more easy, 
as the second million of dollars is more easily gained 
than the first. The reign of law does not imply an ad- 
vance always sluggiish. Science came by law, but it 
came more rapidly in the latest times and ran over more 
space in this century than it passed over in the ten cen- 
turies that preceeded. So culture and morality coming 
by the laws of education and experience may quicken 
their pace in the future and make the twentieth or twenty- 
first century many times as brilliant and moral as the 
times in which we live. The processes of nature are 
often slow, but they need not possess such a quality. We 
have been 1,800 years in reaching what civilization we 
now possess, but two or three centuries might quadruple 
our stock of mental and moral power. Each new mod- 
ern century comes clothed with additional power. It 
holds the past the more perfectly and then elicits more 
and more out of the present. I^aw would just as will- 
ingly fly like a bird as creep like a snail. Having ex- 
changed a spasmodic world for one of natural law we 
need not expect the new wheels to run slowly. 

God in the Holy Place. 

Among the Hebrews God was in the holy place ; in the 
adjoining tribes He was in the groves ; in Egypt He was 
embodied in two brothers, Osis and Osius ; in Persia He 
was in the sun ; in Greece He was on Olympus and at 
Delphi ; in Rome He was in the thunder, in the ocean in 
the winds, and was betrayed by the dreams of a Caesar's 



234 ECHOES 

wife or the flight of his doves. Thus came all the old 
literature with the deity for its ornament and eloquence. 
It was not Isaiah alone w^ho saw the Lord coming in 
peace and splendor, the w^olf the friend of the lamb, the 
lion the playmate of the ox, and the little child leading 
all by its love ; Virgil deduced the same ultimate result 
from the reign of the omnipotent King and sang forth 
that a great era was about to emerge from the ages, that 
the goddess of justice was soon to ascend her throne, 
that the Saturnian age, that of gold was coming, was 
coming, a new race was about to descend from the sky, 
no one w^ould fear the wild lions, the serpents would 
cease to exist, the sap of the oak would become honey. 
Wander whither the reader may in those generations 
which preceded Christ ; read in the pages of Hesiod or 
Pindar, or Sophocles or Virgil, or in the inscriptions on 
Egyptian stones, and he can never get away from the 
empire of God. Paul simply summed up all past feel- 
ing when he used those words : ' ' The onlj^ potentate — 
the King of Kings." 

Christian Philosophy Begins With God. 
The Christian philosophy begins wdth a God; it then 
reveals Christ as showing the divineness of the earth; it 
demands the personal virtue of each human being; it 
makes the moral education of the people the greatest aim 
of person and church and state; but mighty as these 
truths are thej^ are not enough. It goes so much further 
that the language of earth can not follow it. It opens 
the gates of eternity and asks the beings w-ho on earth 
possessed a nature only a little lower than the angels to 
a second and longer life; to come with its torn banners 
and imperfect music, to come wdth its tears and mysteries 
and happiness. It obeys the summons and transfers all 
at last to another land. 



DAVID SWING. 235 

Nothing is Independent. 
There is not much that is accidental in the life of an 
individual or a nation. One of the facts that the modern 
times are establishing is that the whole universe is under 
the reign of law. From the most immense and most 
remote sun to the smallest atom of dust, law is forming 
and retaining and guiding all things at all moments. 
Nothing is independent. Things and events once referred 
directly to God are now referred to the laws of God as to 
the invariable agent of the Almighty. This great infer- 
ence affects not in the least the idea or providence of God, 
for here as among human actors the principle applies 
that what one does through an agent he does through 
himself. 

What Will Atheism Bring ? 

But if thus seen through a dark glass, the idea of God 
has so molded all thought and character, what will atheism 
ever bring to place alongside that conception of the Cre- 
ator that is now trying to burst into the world through 
the windows of a holier temple ? If the altars of religion 
helped man even when those altars asked man to go forth 
to cruel war and cruel persecution, what may not the 
human race expect from them when the only beings that 
shall bow before them shall be brothers, saints, penitents, 
and the only angels above the new mercy-seat shall be 
the seraph of love and the cherub of light ? 

Nothing Available on ^arth But Man. 

Paul, like William Hamilt'^n, saw nothing valuable 
upon earth but man, and nothing great in man but his 
soul. Paul passed from the career of a harsh ruler, or 
rather brutal underling, over to that unbounded charity 
that pities all, and loves all, and helps all. The Jewish 



236 ECHOES 

nation was too limited to satisfy his love. He became 
the apostle to the Gentiles because the Jews were only a 
little sect. The Gentiles were a great world, hundreds 
of millions strong. Paul is the being in history, after 
Jesus Christ, that took into his love the human race. 
The rest of the human history is uncheered by any in- 
stance of a self-denial that had all man for its object. 
Some of the Greeks wrote about the oneness of man, and 
one of them boasted that he was a ''citizen of the 
world. ' ' But the the theory of nobleness found its ear- 
leist realization in Judea. 

Inspiration Does Not Deal in Common Things. 

An elevation, an inspiration the most divine will not 
utter any details about common or uncommon events. 
Our fathers were awakened to the love of freedom, but 
that awakening did not tell them that the struggle for a 
republic would last seven years; did not tell them how 
many States would be added to the first group; that 
some States would lie in the Rocky Mountains, some on 
the shores of the Pacific. Thus the holy men of old were 
told in what paths to walk, but it was not told them how 
far the paths were to run. It was the human zeal and 
hope that said: these paths will bring us to heaven in the 
morning. 

The Millennium, 

We children of the nineteenth centur}^ must discard, 
not the "inspiration of St. John but only his personal 
dream. The vision of a divine kingdom must open up 
before us as it opened before the early Christians, but we 
must believe long indeed the paths that lead thither, and 
the thousand years which seemed so satisfactory to the 
saints must be changed by us into many times ten thou- 



t>AVID SWING. ^^7 

sand; for the word "millennium" was only a poetic term 
which we now see signifies the infinite future of man- 
kind. 

Why Dumas Failed. 

Castelar says that Alexandre Dumas failed of great- 
ness because " he was willing to tell a lie in his books." 
Literature reposes upon truth. So a good life reposes 
upon common sense, and cannot stand upon a basis of 
folly. Why should God send other angels if we despise 
the first? 

Doctrines Sink, Character Rises. 

An effort is now being made by some orthodox clergy- 
men to make the church consist of persons who are try- 
ing to live a life like that of Christ. Doctrines are to 
sink and character is to rise. It is as though the books 
on astronomy were to give place to the magnificence of 
the sun ; it is as though the gifted mother were to put 
aside Cicero's essay on friendship and, instead of reading, 
puts her arms around her idolized child ! Wonderful 
discovery, that a Christian ought to be like Christ ! 
From such a discovery we might infer that a musician 
ought to love music and that a singer should love song ! 
What a discovery ! It follows that an orator should have 
language and that the rainbow should love its seven 
arches and its seven colors ! 

I^essing. 

The great German, Lessing, looked upon morality as 
being virtually God. God is an omnipresent Spirit and 
when man is upright he is with God. Lessing thought 
this idea the one and eternal gospel. No time or place 
could change it. It would stand all alone without any 
consideration of rewards and punishments. In this Les- 



238 KCHOKS 

sing followed some of the great students of antiquity. 
Christ made this human virtue the explanation of man 
upon earth, but he did not attempt to separate morality 
from its reward. His style and his logic was not severe 
enough to permit him to plant himself upon virtue alone. 
He was so loving that he could not rCvSt in the words : 
"Blessed are the pure in heart." His love added: 
" For they shall see God." ''And ye who follow me in 
this recreation of the heart shall sit down upon thrones." 
He knew that man must do right whatever betide. A 
tide w^ould come in and it would be a wave of joy. He 
was more than Philosopher ; He was man's friend. 

The Mind Must Ascend. 

Inasmuch as the golden age must come by natural 
law it must come by a widening intellect that shall slowly 
drag the heart up after it. If the modern intelligence is 
half-way up the mountain then modern morality is one- 
fourth the way from base to peak. In the classic land 
when genius was far up the sides of leafy Parnassus 
morality w^as still around the mountain's base. In bar- 
barian lands both genius and virtue are in sickly vale. 
The mind is the first to pass out and up. 

Faith a Passion. 

Happy day for earth when such a being as Jesus 
Christ came to stand in the center of religious belief to 
transform faith into a passion. Out of that new and in- 
finite outlook came the new purity of the human heart; 
came the tenderness that abolished the Coliseum; came 
the heroism that made martyrs; came the spiritual power 
that gave us new literature and new arts; came the new 
high and solemn music; came the equality of man that 
gave us liberty; came the pure worship that leads to 
Heaven. Where Christ has gone and has been deeply 



DAVID SWING. 239 

loved, languor, that withering of the soul, has been 
delayed or averted. The missionary has sailed out 
•upon every sea; the Elliotts and Marquettes have 
traversed the pine forests and the prairies; the Henry 
Martyns have prayed in Persia; ever}^ where the heart of 
man has moved out toward his fellow, because this faith 
and hope have beaten like a glorious midsummer storm 
upon the barren heart, and have transformed it into an 
Eden. Faith alone touches the strings of the soul and 
makes music. 

Black Morals Must Grow White. 
God does not need to be appeased. If a soul does 
wrong, nothing can come from the outside of that soul 
to satisfy the divine displeasure. All amending must 
come from within the soul. What was black in morals 
must grow white. Jesus reveals all the hidden white- 
ness of humanity. He erases the stains of the ages and 
shows the hidden color so possible to mankind. He 
stands as a solution to the mystery of man. 

Avernus ! 

"Avernus" means birdless. I^ocated in the desolate 
crater of an extinct volcano, a poisonous air issuing from 
the infernal depths hung over the dark water, and stupe- 
fied the sense of the eagle or the nightingale that tried 
to pass from shore to shore. Suddenly the wing became 
powerless, and the eagle with his pride and the nightin- 
gale with his song fell into the river of death. I^et us 
bless the classics that they have handed down to us such 
a figure of human life. There is a lake of'pleasure, of 
folly; of sin, lying near the homes of the young. A 
deadly air hangs over it. The young, forgetful or 
ignorant of its fatal vapors, spread their wings upon its 
ler shore — those wings made in Heaven, and good 



240 KCHOES 

enough for angels. But at last their flight is checked, 
and be the heart once proud like the eagle's, or sweet 
with song like the lark's, alike it falls into the dark 
flood. 

Human I/ittleness. 

But this sinking, this fainting of the soul in presence 
of mental work, is not the result of human greatness, but 
human littleness, it being the struggle of the old ' ' nat- 
ural man ' ' to find still in the nineteenth century the 
sleep and languor which so delighted him when the world 
was young, and the day and night were not vexed by any 
logic or any art. It will require in us all great effort and 
will-power to study man's commerce at home and abroad; 
as doctors we are willing to read the medical journals of 
the old and new worlds; as politicians we are ready to 
mark what the papers said yesterday, and what this or 
that caucus did Bast or West; as ladies of fashion all are 
willing to study the latest forms of raiment, and to com- 
bine desire with the study; but to get out of these chan- 
nels, and while merchants to care for law, or while 
doctors to care for theology, or while lawyers to give any 
thought to a missionary, this is the crucial test which 
few can survive. 

God and Immortality. 

As the army of Moses marched toward the pillar of 
cloud and fire, so the army of all men has marched toward 
that ideal of holiness which we call God, filling all space 
with its radiance. Of all visions that have cheered and 
directed and inspired man, the vision of God and immor- 
tality has been the chief. Atheism would be an awful 
destruction of ideals. To make man look downward 
instead of up, to look backward instead of into endless 
life, to ask the heart to exchange God's temple for the 



DAVID SWING. 



241 



forum, to ask woman to look away from the Infinite 
purity and find her virtue only in the laws of the State, 
this would be such a destruction of ideals as a soul fash- 
ioned like the human soul could not bear, we fear, without 
sinking like that morning star, I^ucifer, from the light of 
heaven down to hell's ray less gloom. The soul is not 
shaped by the actual, but by the ideal. 

England, Athens and Rome I^eft Behind. 

In this new breadth of thought all the modern nations 
join and not only is the old England left far behind, but 
even classic Athens and Rome are dimmed by this 
modern splendor. The new immense themes of reflec- 
tion have made a new mental power and a greater 
mental republic. The state in its liberty and infinite 
detail of right, the church in its doctrines and morals, 
the social questions, the status of man, woman, and 
child, the home, the public education, the group of 
sciences, the brilliant company of arts, the inventions, 
the study of nature, the study of beauty, the drama, the 
opera, the literature of history, philosophy and poetry 
and romance are only the names of the tasks in which 
the mind of our age is busied. For breadth and depth 
no river of thought as great has ever flowed through 
any period. By the law of intelligence as related to sin, 
the stream of wrong must be less than it was before this 
great thought came. Intemperance is moving slowly 
away from the upper classes. More benevolence comes. 
Love displaces cruelty. Sodom and Gomorrah are left 
to only history. Vice is not killed, but it is wounded. 
Moral beauty and not infamy is openly crowned. Our 
literature is more pure ; and a little more of honor is 
seen on the streets and is met by the traveler. As the 
sun, always pulling at our world, cannot affect the 



242 ECHOES 

solid fields and mountains, but can lift up the wide sea 
because it is soft and flexible, and thus can make a tide 
rise high and run like the shadow of a cloud, so the 
human intellect rising to vast bulk and power can lift 
up the pliant morals of mankind, and make a wave of 
goodness run swift and high. Even in our land which 
seems so sinful, the mass of thought is pulling up a tide 
of love. The golden age will dawn when the affections 
of society shall rise in a higher tide to the pulling of the 
intellect. 

Six Thousand Graves- 
How vast is this cemeterj^ of our soldiers ! There are 
six burying grounds within sight of the National Capi- 
tol. Any Congressman who is now trying to sell his 
Nation for gain might by a short walk or ride come to 
some holy spot where the silence and pathos of the scene 
would tell him to think more deeply and act more wisely. 
What a voice would come from the military asylum, with 
its 6,000 graves ! What a voice from Arlington, with its 
16,000 dead ! What a voice from that one spot where 
lie the bones of 2,000 men whose names were not known ! 
The bursting shell, or lingering disease, or emaciation 
in prison, or seperation from companions had made the 
name and home of the dead one dissapear, never to come 
back. Here around the Capitol of their country lie 
25,000, who for their country's welfare, offered up all 
the sweets of this life. 

A Glorious Rationalism. 

The evil of a destructive skepticism must lie chiefly in 
that arrest of spiritual power which it must bring. 
There is a rationalism which, while it is busy destrojdng 
some ideas, is pouring tenfold love upon other thoughts. 
It moves away from a desert that it may build up a home 



DAVID SWING. 243 

in a paradise. This is a glorious rationalism. But there 
is an ultra logic which, instead of moving away from the 
desert, declares all other places to be also a sandy waste, 
and it sits down to perpetual stoicism or perpetual sor- 
row. Such a skepticism is a withdrawal of the supplies 
of life For many of the springs of life cannot be dis- 
covered and established by logic. The Nile may be 
followed and its sources found, but there are streams in 
the soul to whose fountain-heads our science can not 
come. It must be assumed that they come from the 
alpha of life, a personal God. The critical inquiry that 
denies this, has repealed in this overthrow of faith a 
law that has been the intense life of man. 

%J^ vL» vL« •A* vL» «4<» *iL» •A* ^* 

^f^ *j* *j^ *y* ^j* *T^ ^y* *T* *T* 

Professor Swing's lyast Words : A Passage From the 
Unfinished Sermon, 

In our largest mercantile house there are clerks who 
receive $20,000 a year. In one of our music houses we 
can find the same kind of fact. Great salaries are follow- 
ing labor's flag, but it is vain to say that those salaries 
come from demand and supply, for we know that these 
fortunate clerks could be procured at a much lower rate. 
Wages are being modified by the sentiment of human 
brotherhood. It must not be raised as an objection that 
this sentiment is not universal. Perhaps the man who 
raises the objection has not yet become perfectly redeemed 
himself. We should all be conscious of the slowness with 
which perfection spreads over the mortal heart. When 
the town of Pullman was projected, two or more mem- 
bers of its small but rich syndicate opposed the construc- 
tion of such a beautiful village. They said, '*beauty of 
streets, of houses, library, theater, market-place, church, 



244 KCHOES 

lakes, and fountains, will yield no interest on the invest- 
ment. Plain, cheap huts will do as well." But the 
higher ideal carried, and $3,000,000 were thus flung 
away. Some of the founders remembered the sweat- 
shops of the world; and some remembered also the black 
slaves who had received from capital neither a home nor 
wages. There may be defects in the Pullman idea, but 
viewed from a hundred gambling dens and 5, 000 saloons, 
it looks well. Seen from our City Hall it looks like a 
group of palm trees waving over a spring in the desert. 
While traveling through hell Dante was cheered when, 
looking through pitchy clouds, he saw a star. 

We are not to assume that the town of Pullman has 
reached its greatest excellence. It is injured by the 
unrest of the Nation. Perhaps many of our greatest 
employers will, like Mr. Brassy, of England, decline to 
accept of us profits beyond 5 per cent. We must all hope 
much from the gradual progress of brotherly love. * * * 

Here the professor's last manuscript ended. 




DAVID SWING. 245 



TRIBUTE TO JAMES A. GARFIEI.D, 



BY DAVID SWING. 



Now all ye flowers make room ; 

Hither we come in gloom 

To make a mighty tomb, 

Sighing and weeping. 

Grand was the life he led ; 

Wise was each word he said ; 

But with the noble dead 
We leave him sleeping. 

Soft may his body rest 
As on his mother's breast, 
Whose love stands all confessed 

Mid blinding tears ; 
But may his soul so white 
Rise in triumphant flight 
And in God's land of light 

Spend endless years. 



246 KCHOES 



BRIEF PASSAGES FROM THE PRAYERS OF 
PROFESSOR DAVID SWING. 



We know we pronounce Thy name with unworthy 
lips, but we know w^e come into the presence of one full 
of forgiveness ; infinite in love. Ma}^ we all feel forgiven 
and accepted. Fill all Thy Sanctuary in this hour. 
Bless this land in all its interests. Bless this Thy holy 
day. 

O, Thou, who revealest Thyself as ' ' Our Father in 
Heaven," indeed, but also everywhere. Thou fillest all 
space with Thy presence, there is no place where Thou 
art not present in wisdom, as well as in power ; be Thou 
very near to accept of our worship, to bless and to save. 

We come into Thy presence as sincere worshipers. 
May every passing day, every passing scene, reveal to us 
more and more Thy presence. Make more visible Thy 
presence in the world, and more visible Thy relations to 
us. Make each Sunda}^ that comes more full of rest, full 
of affection, full of wisdom. 

Bless all Thy courts this day ; go with the worshipers. 
We pray for a special blessing on this congregation. 
Bless our friends who are disturbed with great sorrow — 



DAVID SWING. 247 

parted from loved ones ; may they think of the world be- 
yond this — where there will be a perfect union of friends. 
Dispel all our doubts, and accept of us in our Saviour's 
name. 

>|<.^ jj< ^ ^ ^ ^ ^K :^ 

May this life not seem all of life. May we look for- 
ward to a better land; to the presence of the King of 
Kings ; the fatherland, whose ways are ways of pleasant- 
ness and all her paths peace ; look forward to coming to 
the greatest of parents — most loving — most kind — most 
wise. May we all accept His life, marking His actions, 
noting His faith, His trust, and so live, that He may be- 
come to each of us a perfect Saviour, saving us and 
bringing us at last to His final home. Hear us and 
graciously accept of us, for Christ' s sake. 

>t* ^^ *J^ *^ ^ *Jc^ ^ ^ ^ 

•]^ >f» «^ ^{^ >Jh *y» *T* *T* «Y» 

We, who have so often been worshipers, again as- 
semble. New obligations have sprung up. Thou hast 
been near us in power. Thou hast led us along to other 
iiours and days, and hast permitted us again to meet 
each other in the house of prayer. The goodness that 
gave us being, the power that has been near us and kept 
with such mindful care, is with us still. And we meet 
again to bless Thee. Thou art everything to each of us. 
Thou art life and Thou art the quality of life, the con- 
tinuance of life, and Thou art the only hope we have of 
life beyond this. We come into this world at Thy 
bidding ; so, at Thy bidding we die, and at Thy bidding 
vshall live again. So, we are each of us the "Alpha" 
and ' ' Omega, ' ' the beginning, the ending. 



248 ECHOES 

May we realize, as often as we come into Thy sanc- 
tuary, though we bring many sins, sins committed 
against each other, (but thus we must come) we come 
into the presence of one who forgives. We come with 
our prayers and our penitence and ask for forgiveness. 
Come to us and bless us with the blessing each heart 
needs. Come and bestow some gift that will keep life 
from being a great loss and failure, and that will make 
all years full of usefulness and happiness. Come with 
special blessing. Give each a faith to see Thee, and to 
know Thou art near. Come to each with a change of 
heart; so we may all be made new creatures in Christ 
Jesus. Then come to each of us, children of mortality, 
with c hope of another life. 

We bless Thee specially for a day that brings our 
thoughts to another life ; a day that is sacred to a life to 
come ; sacred to the dead ; sacred to all that is beyond 
this life. May Thy presence be so with us, that we shall 
believe without a donbt — be able almost to see a world 
brighter than this ; a world divested of all sin ; of all 
disappointments ; of all that makes it undesirable. We 
know that all of us come to this life through Thee ; there- 
fore all go to Thee, who art the resurrection and the life ; 
and believing in Thee, we accept Thy word, and are glad 
to bear the toil and suiFering for Thy sake, doing good, 
as Christ did, and at last go down to the grave to ever- 
lasting life beyond. Fill all our hearts with simple faith 
and simple morals ; and may the hope of a life to come 
bring great happiness to all. 

vl* "^I^ •>A* *^ •4* •1' *1^ vL* %.*A 

*^ ^H ^j* *j% ^X> «^ ^j% *^ v|* 

Thou, everlasting to everlasting, unchanging, loving 
Father, always powerful, always wise, always near, help 



DAVID SWING. 249 

US to come into Thy presence gladly. May all the days 
of the past week make this seem more to us the house of 
God. May the tumult of the world, its noise, its sadness, 
its business, its necessities, lead us all to enjoy the peace 
that passeth all understanding-^the peace of worship — 
the peace that comes to each heart on Thy holy day. 
Although all days are sacred — all days come from Thy 
Divine hand — and are full of blessedness and happiness, 
yet help us all to realize that the day of worship is 
greater than all other days. This day, we pronounce 
Thy holy name ; sing to Thee ; read in Thy presence to 
each other the Divine words of truth. 



^-^(^^^^^ 



INDEX. 



Action 


85 


Achilles Trembled Before Jove, 


. 194 


Avernus, ...... 


239 


Adonirain Judson, . . , . 


. 99 


Angelo and Raphael, ♦ . . . 


162 


August Comte, ..... 


156-189 


A Beautiful Heaven and a Beautiful America, 


103 


A Beautiful that Does Not Fade, 


. 216 


A Day in June, . - . 


197 


A Fine Ear for Heart-Pulses, 


. 84 


A Golden Age, . . . . ♦ 


233 


A Glorious Rationalism, 


. 242 


A Poor Use of a Great Mind, 


60 


A Sad Divorce, ..... 


. 77 


A State Church Not Possible, 


56 


A Thousand Blessed Years, . . 


. 192 


A Touch of Satire, ..... 


55 


A Universe Under Law, . . . ♦ 


. 232 


A Vastness of l/ove, . 


173 


All Days Cannot be Fair, 


. 72 


An Absolute Life Impossible, 


200 


An Age of Worship, .... 


. 19 


An Editor May be a Statesman, . . 


204 


An Endless Problem, ... 


. 150 


An Ideal Christmas, ..... 


163 


An Infinite and Eternal God, . . . 


. 184 


Another and a Greater "Gettysburg," 


50 


Be a Little More Patient, 


. 217 


Beauty Following Thought, 


139 


Beauty in Darkest Africa, 


. 174 


Benevolence Should Not Be Delayed, 


124 



552 



INDEX. 



"Beyond the Wall of Our Own Life We See Ivittle," 

Black Morals Must Grow White, 

"Blue" and "Gray," .... 

Brief Passages from Prayers of Professor Swing, 

Burns and I>ickens, .... 

But Little New Truth, 

Byron and Franklin, .... 

Calvin Did Help the Millennium, . 

Caste in India, ..... 

Caste is Weak, .... 

Changes in the Path of Progress, 

Christ a Wide, Deep, Moral World, 

Christ and Woman, .... 

Christ as a Fact, .... 

Christ in Our Highest E^motions, 

Christ in Human Life, 

Christ Shaping the Literature of Doubt, 

Chnst Spoke for a Whole World, . 

Christ the Center and Circumference, . 

Christ the Revelation of a New God, 

Christ the True "Liberalist," . 

Christian Means Christ, 

Christian Philosophy Begins with God, 

Christianity Flexible in Mode, 

Christmas a High Wave of Good Will to Men, 

Christmas a Simple Language, 

Christmas and the Children, . , 

Christmas and the Feasting of the Thousands, 

Christmas a Supplement to the Heart, . 

Civilization the Mitigation of a Hard Lot, 

Clergymen Must be Leaders, 

Climbing Mon Blanc, 

Coleridge in Chamouni, . 

Conditions of Success, . . 

Confucius, . 

Creeds Harmful to Worship, 

Crumbling Thrones, 

Cultivate Your Reason, 

Danger Ahead, . , 

Days When God Was All, . 



I07 

239 
119 
246 

13 
151 
196 

193 

226 

27 

89 

185 

13 
103 
203 

40 
160 
158 

II 
119 
217 

12 
234 
115 
146 
162 
187 
142 
178 
198 
194 
202 

145 

152 

21 

24 

83 

t02 
183 
143 



INDKX. 



253 



Decoration Day, .... 

Decoratson Day a Perpetual Institution, 

De Toquemada, .... 

Dens Like Palaces, 

Do Not Ask Too Much, . 

Doctrines Sink, Character Rises, 

Dr. R. W. Patterson. 

Bach Age Bows to Philosophy, 

Egotism, . . . , . 

Emilio Castelar, 

England, Athens and Rome Left Behind, 

Events Come Slowly, 

Every Heart Has Thoughts, 

Faith a Passion, 

Faith, Hope and Will, 

Fallible Workmen, 

Fields Drenched in Blood, 

Flowers in the Name of a New Greatness, 

From Darkness to Light, . 

Full Permission to be Educated, 

Give Generously ! Give Now ! . 

God and Immortality, 

God and the People, 

God Cares Nothing Minutiae of Worship, 

God Dismissed from Human Thought, . 

God Great by What He Gives, 

God is Love, 

God in the Holy Place, 

" God the Only Potentate," 

God's Mercy Slow, 

Goldwin Smith, 

Good Leaders, 

Good Out of Nazareth, 

Goodness and Perfection, 

Greatness of Spirit, 

Guns for One, Means Guns for All, 

Harmofty Born of Love, 

Hebrew and Christian Pictures of God, 

Heroism the Beauty of the Soul, 

Highest Education Tends to Simplicity, 



54 

133 
98 

231 
18 

237 

52 

109 

153 
8;: 
24V 
196 
181 
238 
170 

75 
201 

65 
122 

177 

125 
240 

59 
i8o 

97 
26 

174 
23^ 
104 
120 
221 

44 
92 

83 

88 

109 

59 

83 

126 

146 



554 



Index. 



History Full of Ruins, 
How Good Men May Disgrace Their Souls, 
' ♦ How I Love Thy Law, " 
How Men Have Loved War, 
How the Greeks Loved Greece, 
How to Love Christ, 
How Theologians Travel, 
Holding Fast to Truth, 
Human Littleness, 
Humanity Waiting for Noble Deeds, 
Ideals in Art, 
Idleness Fatal to a State, 
If Christ Were Here Now, 
If We Knew God, .... 
Ignorance of the World, 
Industry and Love, .... 
Ingredients of a High Manhood, 
Inspiration Does Not Deal in Common Things, 
Ireevalent Terms .... 
Is not all Thinking Perilous, 
Jasper in the Rock of Poverty, . 
Jesus Willing to Die, 
Jesus Christ Greater than all Sects, 
Jesus Christ Touching the Inmost Spirit, , 
Jeremiah's Tears, 
Job, and Dante, and Milton, 
Kindness Cannot Cease, . 
Kingdom of Law and Love, 
Labor Hostile to Labor, 
Labor Must be Law Abiding, 
*' Labor Sowing Tares." Last sermon preached 
Swing at Central Music Hall, March 20, 1894, 
"Land-Owner" and "Brain-Owner," 
Law Everywhere, - . 

Lessing, ..... 

"Let Me Die in Peace," . 
Let Our Politics be Intelligible, 
Let Us be Kind to Young Ideas, 
Let Us be Patient, .... 
Let Us Walk Humbly, 



by Professor 



231 
198 

195 
106 
192 

32 
21 
205 
241 

28 
116 

89 
191 
216 
190 

96 

15 
236 

22 

85 
169 

139 

78 

199 

94 
214 

56 

48 

45 
38 



39 

77 
206 

237 

159 

79 

7c 

73 

218 



INDEX. 



255 



Liberty, .... 

** Liberalism as Old as Thought," 

Literature is too Light, 

Little Souls Cannot Be Kept from the Bosom of (rod, 

Lonely Hours, .... 

Long Rooted Ills Vanish Slowly, 

Lord Bacon, .... 

Love for Half Visions, 

Luther a Fragment, 

Luther a Result of the Classic Universities, 

Man Born to Greatness as Well as Trouble, 

Man is God's Guest, 

Man Made by Little Things, 

Man Made Great by Sentiments, 

Man's Thoughts Invisible, . 

Many Thoughts Die, 

Martyrdom : An Error and a Crime, 

Mere Denial a Poor Foundation for a Church, 

Millennium, ..... 

Mind Growing Under Culture, 

Mistakes of Agnostics, 

Modnrn Revivalists and Hebrew Prophets, 

Morals Born of Belief in God, 

More " Lives of Saints " than Saints, 

Mozart's Desire, 

Mr. Childs an Example . 

Music the Child of Cnristianity, 

Music the Sister of Religion, 

Nationalism, 

Nature Speaking to Man, 

Neglected Children, 

Newness, .... 

New Truths Rise Slowly, 

New School Presbyterianism, 

No More Military Poems, 

No Need to Lay in Fire-arms, 

No Time for Despots, 

Noah's Dove with a Leaf, 

Not Everything Beautiful, 

Nothing Available on Earth but Man, 



165 
203 

53 
142 
213 
128 

195 
211 

67 
127 

80 

19 

33 
16 

58 
151 
165 
221 
236 

14 
161 

90 
228 

21 
167 
129 
225 

74 
176 

55 
74 

lOI 

200 
100 
150 

93 
42 

213 
152 

235 



256 



INDEX. 



Nothing is Independent, 

O, Boasting Century, 

Obedience to Law, 

"Oh, How I Love Thy Law, " . 

Old and Immortal, . . . 

Old World Blooms, 

On Both Banks of the Ohio, 

On the Quick March, 

Oriental Figures, 

Our Moral World has no Railway Speed, 

Our Nation Must Be Just, 

Our Rice is in its Infancy, 

Our Sorrows Only Temporary, 

Pagan Gods Only Dreams, 

Party Names Must Die, 

Paul, Xavier and Judson, 

Pigeons and Doves, 

Praying for God and Rejecting Christ, 

Presbyterian and Episcopal Worshipers Much Alike , 

Professor Swing's Last Words, 

"Protestant" and "Catholic," 

Politics, ... 

Poor Thoughts Fade, 

Power of Moral Influence, 

Poetry and Wealth, 

Reason and Imagination, 

Relations Involve Duty, 

Religion a Science of Generalities, 

Religion Faithful to the Ages, 

Religion Fighting Vice Only, 

Religion has Become Beautiful, 

Religion Kind to all Ages 

Religion Must Work by Love, 

Religion Should Stand Great, 

Religion will No More Toil Alone, 

"Righteous "—" Converted," 

Rivalry Instead of Worship, 

Roses of the Heart, . 

Salvation and Forms, 

Saviour, 



• • 


235 




. 230 


<» • 


175 




. 229 


. 


10 1 




. 225 


• • 


71 




. 65 


• • 


29 




. 218 


• • 


61 




• 25 


. 


137 




. 118 


. 


207 




. 105 


. 


51 




. 219 


Alike, 


220 




• 243 


. 


134 




. 167 


. 


16 




. 43 


• 


152 




• 34 


♦ • 


176 




. 135 


. 


106 




. 100 


. 


207 




• 155 


• 


190 




• 135 


. 


62 




• 157 


• . 


169 




. 174 


. 


154 


* « 


. 155 



INDEX. 



257 



Seneca and George Fox, 
Science Full of Cruelty, 
Self Denial, ..... 

Six Thousand Graves, 

So Long ! And Yet So Ignorant, 

Something that Was Not a Mistake, 

Son of God, . . . . , 

Space Seems Impossible, 

Spirituous Drink the Death of Thought, 

Success to the Civic Federation, 

Tears, ...... 

Ten Thoughts, .... 

Tennyson's "In Memoriam," 

Thank God for Our Altars, . 

The Age Treats Us All Alike, 

The Angels Will and Judgment, 

The Arts, ..... 

The Attic Philosopher, .... 

The Barren Wars of History, . . 

The Battle Hymns of the Republic, 

The Beauty of Homely Heroes, . 

The Bible All Glorious, . . . 

The Bible Definite and Indefinite, 

The Bible an Open Book, 

The Bible in the Schools, 

The Black Passion, .... 

The Blending Christ, 

The Broad Churchman, 

The Church the Moral Hope of the Land, 

The Composure of Theology and the Courage 

The Dawn of Brotherhood, . ♦ 

The Death of Caste .... 

The Disciples Amazed, 

The Divine Summer Time of the People, 

The Kver Rolling Web of Life, . . 

The Kxample of Jonah, 

The Fourth and Fifth Centuries, 

The Future Has No Potency 

The Gate Beautiful . . . , 

The God Idea .... 



• 


117 




no 


. 


69 




242 


. 


186 


• • 


30 




219 


• 


149 




• 55 


• 


79 




203 


• • 


162 




166 


. 


218 




123 


• 


193 




179 


. 


205 




62 


. ' . 


60 




168 


. 


183 




• 171 


. 


134 




. 154 


• ♦ 


36 




212 


• 


207 




. 188 


of Scepticism 


22 




88 


. . 


23 




. 202 


. 


115 




. 96 


• ♦ 


20 


..^-. 


. 149 


• • 


121 


• « 


34 


• • 


165 



258 



INDEX. 



The Golden Rod . 

The Great Discoveries of Our Era 

The Greatness of the World 

The Greek Race 

The Heart of the Pulpit 

The Heroes of the Bible 

The Highest Utterance of Atheism 

The Hindoo Fakirs Are All Thelogians 

The Human Feet Must Tramp . 

The Industrious Millions, 

The Imperishable Ideas of Christ, 

The Impressionist School of Art, 

The Insanity of Fanatics, 

The Justice of Jesus Christ, 

The Low in the Spirit, 

The Large Part of Life Should Come First, 

The Making of Christian Character, 

The Mind of God, .... 

The Mind Must Ascend, 

The Modern Girl's Indebtedness, . 

The Moral Quality of the War of the Rebellion, 

The Moral Spendthrift, 

The Music is More than the Notes, 

The Name " United States " a New Name, 

The Nation Has No Soul, 

The Natural World, 

The New Human Philosophy, 

The New Testament Has Been Compelled to Keep Bad 

The Organization of Unions, 

The Old Baleful Theology, 

The Old Gods Are Dumb, 

The Old Slave on Goat Island, 

The Outlook Draped With Clouds, 

The Pilgrims to Washington, 

The Potter's Clay, 

The Power of Words, 

The Poverty of the Prophets, 

The Providence of Law, 

The Pulpit Knows but Little, 

The Pulpit Must March with the Age, 



« • 


. 228 


• i 


164 


• • 


. 147 


. 


114 


• • 


. 38 


• 


87 


. 


. 179 


. 


144 


. 


. 57 


. 


86 


. 


. 209 


. 


122 


. 


• 51 


. 


187 


. 


. 209 


• • 


105 


. 


. 47 


. 


167 


. 


. 238 


. 


181 


n, 


. 112 


. 


20 


. 


. 24 


• 


95 


• 


. 205 


. 


227 


. 


. 46 


^ep Bad Co 


mpanyi48 


. 


. 41 


. 


168 


. 


. 121 


. 


173 


. 


• 144 


. 


223 


. 


. 208 


. 


159 


. 


. 141 


. 


230 


. 


. 173 


. 


27 



INDEX. 



259 



The Pulpit Should Adorn the Battlefield, 

The Ratchet on the Wheel of Progress, 

The Reconciliation of Christianity and Common Sense 

The Reformation Occupied Three Hundred Years, 

The Rich, the Poor and the Children, 

The Right to Liberty, 

The Rights of Dumb Brutes, 

The Robe of Thought, 

The Scotch Heather, 

The Sensitive Mind, 

The Sermon on the Mount Was Needed, 

The Shellfish Element in Man, 

The Sirens Round the Boat of Ulysses, 

The Sound of Many Waters, 

The Stream of Public Morals, . 

The Street Called "By-and-by," . 

The Study of Man is the Study of Mind, 

The Task of Author and Orator, . , 

The Times " Out of Joint," 

The Torn Page, .... 

The True Source of a New Era, 

The Usefulness of To-day, 

The Unity of Thought and Morals, 

The Value of Worship, 

The Vastness of the Universe, . 

The Wills of the Rich, 

The Word "God," 

The Worship of God an Unfading Flower, 

The Worship of Humanity, 

The Years an Etruscan Vase, 

Thomas Jefferson, 

Those Who Seek Justice Should be Just, 

Thought Brings Change, 

Times Have Changed Since the Year 1208, 

Toiling is Vain, . . 

To-morrow Will Be as To-day, 

Toussant Louverture, 

Tribute to James A. Garfield, ^ . 

True Greatness Comes Slowly, 

True Thoughs of God, 



132 
76 
29 

140 
84 

III 

108 
31 
31 
17 

123 

23 

63 

212 

197 
132 
138 
183 

75 
190 

68 

98 

82 

18 

90 

171 

227 

28 

78 

145 

153 

222 

14 
66 
82 

137 
15 

246 
68 

182 



26o 



INDEX. 



Unitarians Unhappy Over Their Name, 

" Universalism Giving Place to Christian," 

Usefullness is Born of Love, 

Vague, but Most Valuable, 

Vines and Flowers, 

Waiting for a Fact, . 

Wanted ! — A Scrong Government, 

Washington, .... 

Watching and Fighting, 

Wendell Phillips, 

We All Need Special Care, 

We Cannot Escape the Great Problem, 

We Cannot Wait for Names, 

We Learn by Sight, 

We Must be Wholly Free, 

What a Vision for Isaiah and John, . 

What Does this Babbler Say ? . 

What is "Breath," . 

What Is a Citizen ? 

What Is a Church ? . 

What Is a Statesman ? 

What Modern Scientists Have Done, 

What Overthrew Slavery, 

What Touches One Touches All, 

What Will Atheism Bring ? 

When Citizens Are Followers of Christ, 

When the Higher Politics Shall Come, 

Where Sin Is, God Is Not, 

Whittier Wept Like Jeremiah, I 

Why Dumas Failed, 

Why Not Accept a Deity ? 

Why We Love the Violets, 

Wisdom Not Fickle, 

Wolf! Wolf! 

Woman Fifty Years Ago, 

Woman in Japan, 

Words Are Embalmed Ideas, 

Worship Enchains Man to His Maker 

Worship is for the Worshiper, . 

Xavier, Duff, Judson, 

You Cannot Drive a Yoke of Oxen a Mile 

Young People of the Past Injured, 



a Minute, 



. 215 

70 

. 147 

86 

• 143. 
211 

. 86 
158-180 

• 99 
171 

. 80 
182 

. 58 

112 

. 129 

176 

. 118 

66 

. 33 

59 

• 113 

17 

. 172 

12 

• 535 

' 54 

53 

146 

' 113 
237 

. 188 

117 

232 

135 
124 
182 

131 
12 

35 
III 
219 
194 



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